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PLAIN TALKS 



FAMILIAR SUBJECTS 



SERIES OF POPULAR LECTURES. 



BY 

J. G. HOLLAND 



FIFTEENTH THOUSAND. 

NEW YORK: 
SCRIBNER,, ARMSTRONG & CO., 

SUCCESSORS TO 

CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 

654 BROADWAY. 
1872. 






*v Transfer 
Jim 6 1*0? 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United State* for fcha 

Southern District of New York. 



SHme ^ttinxn 



ARE DEDICATED 



TO THOSE 



FOR WHOM THEY WERE ORIGINALLY WRITTEN 



TO THE MEMBERS OE THE 

LYCEUMS AND LE C TUBE ASS 00 IATI X8 



UNITED STATES, 



c*% 



^/r 



«4 












PEEFAOE 



Evert accepted speaker before the lecture-asso- 
ciations of the country hears the frequent expres- 
sion of a wish, on the part of his audiences, to secure 
in type the utterances of his tongue. My own ex- 
perience in this respect has not been exceptional ; 
and, in publishing this volume of lectures, I fulfil a 
promise repeatedly made to those who have heard 
them from the platform. It seems legitimate to con- 
clude that that is not valueless on the printed page 
which has been received with favor by many audien- 
ces, in nearly every Northern State of the Union. 
I am sure it will revive some pleasant memories ; 
and I hope it may renew some useful impressions. 

These lectures have been written at different 
periods during the last six or seven years. These 
years have been eventful ones in American history ; 



Preface. 



and they have given point and coloring to much 
that the volume contains. It has not been deemed 
desirable to introduce changes in the text, in order 
to adapt it to altered times and circumstances, or to 
append notes explanatory of incidents and events 
that have retired from the field of current interest 
into history. Such lectures as bear the stamp of 
any time bear the stamp of their own time, and 
sufficiently explain themselves. 

J. G. H. 

Speingfield, Mass., July, 1S66- 



CONTENTS 



PAGI 

I. — Self-Help, . .... 9 

IL— Fashion, 48 

III.— Work and Play, 82 

IT. — Working and Shirking 119 

V. — High Life and Low Life, . . , 156 

VI. — The National Heart, 195 

VII. — Cost and Compensation, 233 

VTH. — Art and Life, 271 

IX. — The Popular Lecture, 309 



SELF-HELP. 



THE power of self-help — the power that sits be« 
hind, or sits above, all other human powers — the 
motive force of progress — the mother element of his- 
tory — is, perhaps, the most interesting and the most 
wonderful to which we can turn our attention. In it 
abide the germs of all individual growth and develop- 
ment. Of it are born all the facts and all the pheno- 
mena of human civilization. 

It is this power which distinguishes man among, or 
from, animals. Curious philosophers have variously 
characterized man as a laughing animal, a talking ani- 
mal, a reasoning animal ; but the functions upon which 
these distinctions are based can hardly be deemed 
radically characteristic ; for all animals laugh, and talk, 
and reason, in their own way. The power of self-help, 
nowever, cannot be predicated of any animal but man 
— the power to conceive and achieve a higher, better, and 
rationally more desirable character and condition than 
1* 



10 Self-Help. 



he possesses. It is not a development of the animal 
life at all, but stands above it — stands upon it — and 
lifts the hand by which man links himself in alliance 
with God and the angels. All art, all science, all agen- 
cies that give man power over nature and over his own 
destiny, all civilizing forces whatsoever, are emanations 
of this power. All inspirations from above are ad- 
dressed to it. All ambitions have root in it. All emu- 
lations are suggested and supported by it. It is the 
main-spring which moves the wheels of the world's 
industry. It is, in short, the characteristic power of 
man, and that which crowns him with divine possibili- 
ties. 

This faculty of self-help, then — this power of build* 
ing exalted ideals of life and character, and of realizing 
those ideals by self-elevation to them and into them — 
the power of voluntary development in the individual 
and of civilization in society, is that which distinguishes 
man from all the forms of life we know. It would be 
delightful to devote the hour to a historical and philo- 
sophical consideration of this characteristic power of 
man. It would be pleasant to draw from biography 
\nd from history illustrations of its operation, because 
the grateful task would be simply to sketch the story 
of the progress of mankind. "We should see how im- 
pulsive childhood has, by the inborn power of self-help, 
visen into rational manhood; — how rude barbarism has, 



Self-Help. 11 



by its patient hands, climbed slowly up the centuries 
into civilization — how it has constructed and used, and 
destroyed and reorganized, institutions — how Chris- 
tianity itself came down to meet and aid it, and to join 
hands with it for the world's regeneration. But our 
discussion will take a lower and more practical range. 

You are aware that, for the past twenty or twenty- 
five years, there has been a great deal of talk about 
self-help, self-culture, self-discipline, and self-made men. 
The young, and particularly those who have had little 
to do w T ith the schools, have been addressed through 
ingeniously written biographies, through anecdotes of 
humble men who have risen in the world, through 
proverbs, maxims, exhortations, and appeals in prose 
and verse — every imaginable thing, indeed, adapted to 
reach and rouse unlettered ambition. In all the teach- 
ings on this subject there has been a measure of truth, 
and always, perhaps, a laudable motive ; but it con- 
tains so much of falsehood — it has led so many men 
into fatal mistakes — it is so mischievous in the social, 
political, and professional life of this country — that the 
time is fully come when the public thought should be 
critically directed to it. 

We have had, and we now have, a cla^s of writers 
whose avowed purpose it is to stimulate the humble to 
rise in the world, — not to rise into manly excellence in 
their own sphere ; but, irrespective of their tastes and 



12 Self-Help. 



talents, to rise out of their sphere. Biographies of 
men of genius are written with the direct intent to 
excite the whole class out of which these exceptional 
men sprang into an imitation of their efforts. Here 
and there, doubtless, some worthy nature gets encour* 
agement from these narratives ; but the general effect 
is to start young men into courses of life, and lead 
them to the adoption of callings and professions, to 
which the^ have no natural adaptation. 

The lesson of the lives of these men is not left to 
be gathered by the common sense of their readers ; 
but the biographies are written for the sake of the 
lesson, and, of course, the lesson is pointedly shaped to 
its purpose. The idea kept prominently uppermost in 
these biographies, as in all the teachings of their 
writers, is, that a man may be anything that he 
chooses to become ; that will, determination, purpose, 
labor, perseverance, will accomplish anything — all true 
with relation to some men, and all false with relation 
to the majority of men. The effect of this upon bright 
men, who have sense enough to see what kind of a life 
they are adapted to, and who do not need the stimulus 
which works like these are calculated to supply, is, of 
course, not bad ; but the stupid, the weak, the obtuse, 
the slow, are those generally who read the books, and 
who are influenced by them into a life for which thev 
bave no natural fitness. 



Self-Help. 13 



Let us, for a moment, look at some of the maxima 
which these biographies are intended to illustrate, and 
which are in frequent use themselves. " Where there's 
a will there's a way " — one of the largest lies ever 
palmed off upon credulous humanity. Everybody haa 
a will to be rich ; but there is no way for everybody to 
be rich ; there is no way for one man in ten to be rich. 
1 suppose that at least a thousand men have a will to 
become President of the United States ; but there is 
no way for one in five hundred of them to achieve the 
object of his ambition. There is a pretty universal 
will for social or political distinction ; but the laudable 
ways of obtaining it are not many nor easy. 

" Labor conquers all things " — another lie, as it is 
accepted and used. The power of the laborer must be 
equal to the power required by his task, or his labor 
will conquer nothing. Set an ass to carry an ele- 
phant's burden, and his back will be broken. The 
man of few brains cannot do the work of the man of 
many brains. Labor may read many books, without 
conquering one of them. Labor may read Shakspere ; 
but labor alone did not write Shakspere, and labor 
alone, without Shakspere's brains, can never equal him. 

" Nothing is impossible to him who wills " — a sen- 
tence of Mr. Emerson's, I think, though only a repe- 
tition of a Chinese maxim, and about as true as we 
should naturally suppose a Chinese maxim would be. 



Self-Help. 



Now these maxims, and the biographies and anec* 
dotes which are written to illustrate and enforce them, 
all say to the boy and the young man this : " You can 
make of yourself anything you may choose to make. 
To become a great preacher, or a great lawyer, or a 
great physician, or a great financier, or a great states- 
man, all that it is necessary for you to do is to will, to 
labor, and to persevere." Like the accommodating 
showman, who was inquired of as to which might be 
the kangaroo and which the hyena in his collection, 
they say : " Yichever you please, gentlemen ; you pays 
your money and you takes your choice." All they 
have to do is to pay the requisite amount of labor, and 
the key of destiny will be placed in their hands. 

It is under spurs like, these that multitudes of men 
come up, and enter into walks of life for which they 
nave no natural fitness. Victims of the false ideas pro- 
mulgated upon this subject may be counted by thou- 
sands in this country — disappointed men — unqualified 
for the posts they have patiently and faithfully labored 
to reach and fill, and spoiled for the range of life in 
which they naturally belonged. 

But, before I go further in this direction, I have 
another matter to discuss, which may be introduced by 
the proposition that every well-made man is a self-made 
man. It matters not whether he rise from vulgar pov- 
erty, or vulgar riches ; whether Lis roots be planted in 



Self-Help. 15 



high or in humble life ; whether he have the advan- 
tage of books and preceptors, or whether he acquire 
his education by direct contact with facts and things ; 
whether he be a day-laborer in the garden of his neigh- 
bor, or a life-laborer in the vineyard of his Lord ; if he 
be a well-made man, he is always a self-made man. 

I mean, by this, that there is no instituted process 
by which a true manhood may be manufactured ; that 
there is no educational mill which takes in boys and 
turns out men ; that all who become men of power 
reach their estate by the same self-mastery, the same 
self-adjustment to circumstances, the same voluntary 
exercise and discipline of their faculties, and the same 
working of their life up to, and into, their high ideals 
of life. 

The popular notion is, that only he is a self-made 
man who, without the aid of schools, or the regular 
processes of education, arrives at excellence in knowl- 
edge, or who, without the advantages of wealth and 
culture, achieves high position. 

The self-made man is thus, in the popular apprehen- 
sion, a remarkable man — a most honorable and worthy 
exception to the general rule. A day-laborer, for in- 
stance, acquires in the intervals of his toil a score of 
languages, and he is dubbed a self-made man, though 
his acquisitions may be useless to the community in 
which he lives, and an absolute disadvantage to him 



16 Self-Help. 



self and his family. A man by craft, and cunning, and 
miserly meanness, may come up from some low place, 
and acquire wealth, and, through wealth, influence ; 
and straightway people will speak of him as a self- 
made man. A vulgar wretch, s by the arts of the dema- 
gogue — by chicanery, and duplicity, and bribery — may 
arrive at place and power; and he will always find 
toadies and tools enough around him to glorify him as 
a self-made man. A peculiar honor seems to be at- 
tached to such men as these, as if whatever they might 
do were more remarkable and creditable than if done 
by others. The music of a corn-stalk fiddle or a pump- 
kin trumpet may not be overwhelmingly ravishing in 
itself ; but we are expected to admire it, because corn- 
stalks and pumpkin-vines are not materials usually drawn 
upon for the manufacture of musical instruments. 

Of self-made men like these, the high places of this 
country are. shamefully full to-day ; but the majority of 
them are not self-made men at all. We have self-made 
governors, self-made members of Congress, self-made 
preachers, doctors, and lawyers ; self-made sheriffs and 
justices ; self-made mayors and aldermen ; self-made 
scoundrels and self-made noodles of various denomina- 
tions ; but self-made men are by no means so plenty. 
It would not be safe to predicate genuine manhood of 
every person who rises from poverty to wealth, or who 
lifts himself from common life to positions of influence 



Self-Help. 17 



and power. It might bring us into relations which 
would damage both our comfort and our character, 
even should we be so fortunate as to escape with our 
pocket-handkerchiefs and watches. 

Though the popular idea of self-made men includes 
all the classes which have been alluded to, it is applied 
in a better sense, and more particularly, to those who 
have arrived at learning and legitimate personal power 
without the aid of schools. These are called self- 
made men to distinguish them from college-made men, 
or " university-men." It would not be difficult to 
select two men, of equal and similar natural gifts, 
representatives respectively of these two classes, work- 
ing side by side in life, and illustrating the difference 
in the temper and quality of their manhood. It w r ould 
not be difficult to see why the man who educates him- 
self, without the aid of professional preceptors, always 
surpasses in personal power him who is simply a col- 
lege-made man. 

Now let me be understood with relation to what 
— for the purposes of this discussion — I call a college- 
made man. Let me first repeat the proposition that all 
well-made men are self-made men; and now let me 
say that the majority of self-made men are men who 
have had a "liberal education." A strictly college- 
made man is one who has adopted and obeyed the 
arbitrary and undiscriminating laws of the schools tbi 



8 Self-Help. 



his development ; who has submitted himself, with his 
fellows, to all the prescribed processes ; who has swal- 
lowed, without a question, the food prepared alike for 
him and them, and who has gone to the work of hia 
life without a particle of training addressed to hia 
special individuality, or without the slightest knowl- 
edge of the relations of his individuality to the world 
of life upon which he has undertaken to exercise his 
power. Such are the men who pray by rote and 
preach by rule; whose individual personal power is 
absolutely nothing ; who are simply tolerated as neces- 
sary and cheaply-procured parts of ecclesiastical ma- 
chinery. Such are the men who make mockery of law ; 
who hold principles subject to precedents, and who 
forget justice in their blind worship of words and 
forms and phrases. Such are the men who prescribe 
the name of a drug for the name of a disease, and who 
lay down the lives of their neighbors, and would possi- 
bly be willing to lay down their owd, rather than de- 
part from their old, unreasoning routine. 

Such as these I call college-made men, in contradis- 
tinction from self-made men. Both from college and 
from the world outside, noble, self-made men arise — 
men who know their own individual powers ; who in- 
telligently select the nutriment which those powers 
demand ; who understand the relations of their indi- 
viduality to the life of the world ; who place them- 



Self-Helo. 19 



selves in contact with facts and affairs, and who, with 
an ideal of excellence before them, which their own 
imaginations have builded, build themselves up to it, 
and into it. Such are the men who elect, appropriate, 
and assimilate, from the wide variety of food presented 
to them, that which will nourish them, whether it come 
from the intellectual commons of college-life, prepared 
and presented by the accredited professional cooks, or 
whether it be hunted down in the wilderness, and eaten 
by the wayside. 

The prominent characteristic of self-made men is 
individuality — a quality never characteristic of college- 
made men. When I say this, I beg you to keep in 
mind the vital distinction between these two classes 
which I have endeavored to define, and the fact that 
self-made men come more frequently from the college 
than from the world outside. In any process of train- 
ing to which they may be subjected, they never allow 
their self-hood to be crushed. They take in that which 
they need ; they reject that which they do not need — 
that which bears no relation to their individuality. 
They make themselves, and are not made by others — 
that is, they voluntarily bring their powers up to the 
work which they see themselves adapted to do ; they 
feed themselves with relation to their work; they 
grow from the centre, and organize as they grow ; and 
all the efforts of their life go out on the lines of the 



20 Self-Help. 



relations of their individuality to the world and its 
affairs. 

Power, in its quality and degree, is the measure of 
manhood. Scholarship, save by accident, is never the 
measure of a man's power. It may be inferior to his 
power ; it may be greater than his power ; it may exist 
unaccompanied by power at all, as it does in all who 
are simply college-made. All the positive, progressive 
thinking and work of this world, are done by self-made 
men. The life of these men may pass through college- 
made men — considerably diluted — using them for ve- 
hicles, and thus become indefinitely diffusive and effect- 
ive ; but all positive human power abides in and pro- 
ceeds from those self-nourished, self-sustained, self- 
educated, self-trained souls that place themselves in 
vital contact with the things of God and man, and 
organize and use them according to their respective 
individualities. 

College-made men can tell what they have learned 
by measure. ' They can be called up and made to de- 
liver thoughts upon any given subject by platoons. 
They have profound reverence for authority. They 
are always loyal partisans. They contentedly abide 
within the precincts of creeds. Pure scholarship is 
always conservative. It clings to, and loves to become 
the ornament of, dominant institutions, and is ever 
timid of change. It swims easily along the currect of 



Self-Help. 21 



peaceful life, but shrinks from emergencies, and shirks 
the work of revolutions. It does not know how to 
deal with new questions. It has no vital, sympathetic 
connection with the life of the world ; and shuts its 
ears to the din, and its eyes to the dust, of its con- 
flicts. It is too often a dead-weight upon social and 
political reforms. Its life is a borrowed and specific 
life, and has no power of self-adjustment to the shifting 
circumstances of a world of change, and the constantly 
new developments of a progressive age and race. It 
lives in, and upon, the past ; and draws neither motive 
from the present nor inspiration from the future. 

College-made men are very fine ornamental-men- - 
very good things to have for celebrations and occasions 
of show. They excel in contributions to family news- 
papers. They collate excellent school-books. They 
preach unexceptionable sermons to very exceptional 
people, and reverently put off their shoes among those 
who have the reputation of tender corns. The self- 
made men of the world — self-made in college or out of 
college — may be very rough men — men who will shock 
your prejudices, and offend your notions of propriety, 
and scare you by their innovations, and horrify you by 
their lack of reverence for great names and venerable 
conventions and institutions ; but they are the only 
men whose productions will possess permanent attrac* 
tions for you. They are the only men who can feed 



22 Self-Help 



and stimulate and move you, and satisfy the cravings 
of your nature. They have original power ; they pos- 
sess individuality : and the only fresh things introduced 
into the world, from year to year, and from generation 
to generation, are borne by the hand of individuality. 

Having exhibited my idea of the self-made, as con 
tradistinguished from the college-made, man, I am ready 
to make the proposition that every man's natural or- 
ganization is adapted to the fulfilment of a certain 
office in the world. In making this proposition, I only 
say that God gives every man individuality of constitu- 
tion, and a chance for achieving individuality of char- 
acter ; that He puts special instruments into every 
man's hands by which to make himself and achieve his 
mission. I suppose that the proposition will hardly be 
controverted by any one. It certainly must underlie 
all sound theories of human development, even if it be 
not self-evident. 

Every man, therefore, as he has individuality of 
nature, may have individuality of character ; and every 
man who can achieve individuality of character can be, 
either in a higher or humbler degree, a self-made man. 
It is a fact, I suppose, that there is comparatively little 
individuality of character in the world. The rule is 
against it, because the influences of the world are 
against it. We are all soldiers of the king of fashion, 
and dress in uniform. We march in battalions under 



Self- Help. 23 



the banner of public opinion. We choose our courses 
and our callings, not with reference to our own pow 
ers, but with reference to conventional notions touch- 
ing the desirableness of those courses and callings. In 
this way, the individuality of our natures is suppressed 
and ultimately destroyed. They find in the work 
which they are set to do nothing to which they bear 
natural relation. Put a penknife to do the work of an 
axe, and you spoil at once an instrument that only bears 
relation to quills and finger-nails ; and it is hardly more 
or less than truth to say that the majority of men put 
themselves, or are put, to work to which they have no 
natural adaptation. 

We find that, in the world's estimate, certain pro- 
fessions, callings, and trades are held highest — held to 
be most honorable and respectable. So the whole 
world rushes after them — rushes into them ; so half of 
the world gets out of its place at once, and loses its 
individuality ; and so half of the world gets made by 
its calling, and does not make itself at all. 

Now, the truth is that every man is respectable, and 
every man grows in power symmetrically, only when 
he is in his place. No man is respectable when he is 
out of his place ; no man can grow in characteristic 
power when out of his place. All thrifty and success- 
ful self-making must depend not only upon an intelli- 
gent selection of nourishment for our powers, but an 



24 Self-Help. 



intelligent selection of the work which they are best 
adapted to do. 

If you have ever attended an exhibition of horses, 
you will remember that they are presented in a great 
variety of size, and style of form and action. One is a 
truck-horse, another is a farm-horse ; one is a family- 
horse, another a saddle-horse ; one is a fancy horse, and 
another a fast hoi^se. The fast horse is the most popu- 
lar — the most admired and coveted by the crowd 
These different classes of horses are each adapted to a 
different kind of labor, and can only manifest their 
individual qualities when put to their legitimate work. 
They can only properly develop, or make themselves, 
by that work. Now suppose, with a view to the popu- 
larity of fast horses as a class, and not with reference 
to individual qualities at all, these horses, in all their 
variety, are entered for the premium on speed. Think 
what a figure they would make on the course ! The 
real — the only — contest, would be among those that 
have a natural adaptation to speed ; while the remain- 
der would go lumbering along behind, and, by the 
clumsiness of their extraordinary efforts, would render 
themselves ridiculous. Boys would hoot at them ; 
dogs would bark at them ; and they would come in 
so far behind that their drivers would be obliged to 
join in the laugh that would sweep along the line of 
spectators. 



Self-Help. 



25 



Now drive all from the track, and bring them up in 
classes ; and you will see that we have a very different 
result. The elephantine truck-horse walks slowly by, 
the representative of sturdy strength ; and there is 
nothing ridiculous about him now. The docife farm 
horse trots quietly along in fitting harness, and proves 
himself to be a legitimate object of our admiration. 
The family-horse, at an easy pace, bears over the course 
his freight of women and children, and he, too, is ad- 
mirable — nay, he may be lovable. The saddle-horse 
ambles along under his rider, and we pronounce him 
both beautiful and graceful. You perceive that all 
these animals were ridiculous and contemptible so 
long as they undertook to do that to which their 
individualities were not adapted ; and that all be- 
came pleasing and admirable, the moment they took 
their own place, and entered upon their legitimate 
work. 

Now, suppose all these horses had actually been 
trained with reference to the popular opinion that 
speed is the only desirable thing, or the most desir- 
able thing, in a horse. Suppose the truck-horse, for 
example, had been put to his best as a trotter, 
through a long course of training : would he ever 
have made a fast horse ? Never ; and, what is much 
more to be lamented, he would have been spoiled 
for a truck-horse forever. His wind would have 
2 



26 Self-Help. 



been broken, his knees started, and his spirit ruined. 
In other words, his individuality — thoroughly admi- 
rable in itself — would have been destroyed. The 
same may be said of all the other classes of animals 
I have mentioned. No possible training could make 
fast horses of them ; and they could only receive 
training for high speed at the cost of their indi- 
viduality, and the loss of their ability to do that 
work well for which they were originally designed. 

What a lesson for us is there in this illustration ! 
Bear me witness that the track of American public 
and professional life is crowded with human truck- 
horses and farm-horses and family-horses and saddle- 
horses, ail entered for the premium on speed, all 
making themselves ridiculous by the efforts they 
put forth to win it, and all spoiling themselves for 
the sphere to -which their native individualities are 
adapted. 

Thousands of these unhappy men were started 
and stimulated in their courses by such general, in- 
discriminate counsels as I have alluded to. As boys 
— as young men — they were told to " aim high," and 
particularly informed that if they pointed their ar- 
rows at the sun, the flight would be higher than it 
would be if the aim were lower, — another of those pre- 
cious maxims, by-the-way, of which the w r orld has too 
many; as if it were not better to knock from a 



Self-Help. 2T 



Virginia fence a respectable gray squirrel, than t<J 
spend one's shots on blank blue sky ! No man who 
can hit anything, or who was ever made to hit any- 
thing, can afford to waste his arrows upon an object 
which he knows they can never reach. Even if the 
acquisition of learning were the grand object of a 
man, definiteness of aim would serve him better than 
indefiniteness, though it is not so essential ; but when 
his object is to cultivate that power which is the 
measure of his manhood, his aim must be deter- 
mined by the shape of his arrow, the size of his bow, 
and the strength of his arm. 

The prizes of professional and political life are 
those which the great world of unformed mind is 
taught to regard not only as desirable above all 
things, but as obtainable by all men ; and, being 
both desirable and obtainable, to be striven for. 
The effect has been to crowd professional life with 
mountebanks and inferior men, and political life 
with demagogues. It will not be disputed, I sup- 
pose, that there are more men engaged in the pro- 
fessions of law and medicine than the country has 
any need of; more than can obtain a respectable 
livelihood for themselves. The popular notion — the 
popular fallacy — is, that if a man is going to make 
anything of himself, he must be in public or profes- 
sional life of some sort. 



28 'Self-Help. 



I hesitate to speak of the effect of these falsa 
ideas upon the Christian ministry, because it is im- 
possible to judge how far they have been compli- 
cated with conscience, honest self-consecration, and 
motives of beneficence. A young man commences 
a course of training with reference to a professional 
life. He proposes,*we will say, to become a lawyer. 
Possibly he has a decided adaptation to that profes- 
sion ; but, midway in his college course, he becomes 
a religious man. Immediately — with no sufficient 
regard to the adaptedness of his individuality to 
the work of the ministry — he determines to become 
a preacher. I suppose that nine out of every ten 
occupants of the American pulpit were moved to 
the choice of their profession by their hearts, with- 
out any really competent examination of the qual- 
ity of their heads. One consequence of this is, that 
we have a Christian ministry in this country which 
embraces a larger number of honest, good, pure, 
self-sacrificing men than can be found, as I believe, 
in any other class of men in the world. In my 
judgment the American Christian ministry contains 
the least corrupted, and the least corruptible, of men ; 
but, alas ! I am afraid that not one half of them are 
self-made — that not more than one half of them have 
appreciable power as ministers of the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. They break down under the effect 



Self-Help. 29 



of labors for which they have no natural adapta* 
tion ; they rove unfruitful and unhappy from pul- 
pit to pulpit ; they fail to command the attention 
and respect of the world around them ; and they 
have the life-long grief of seeing the work to which 
their hearts are devoted failing to prosper in their 
bands. 

I will not undertake to decide so delicate a 
question as this matter involves ; but I may be al- 
lowed to say that it seems to me as if it were a 
more Christian thing to be a first-rate Christian 
lawyer, or a first-rate Christian farmer, or a first- 
rate Christian shoemaker, than a fifth-rate Christian 
minister. If a young man becomes religious, and 
puts his fife under the law of love, it is not there- 
fore necessary to his highest efficiency in the Mas- 
ter's service that he become a preacher. Nay, the 
pulpit may be the place of all others in the world 
where he would be the most likely to do damage to 
the cause he loves. • 

With a respect for the Christian ministry of this 
country which is as great as Puritan training and a 
thousand delightful personal ^ friendships can make it, 
I am compelled to believe that a full half of its 
members are little more than the creatures of their 
colleges and the mouth-pieces of their theological 
schools ; that they entered their profession, not be 



30 Self-Help. 



cause they were adapted to it, or saw themselves 
specially adapted to it, but because they were moved 
to it by a mistaken sense of duty, or a false idea of 
professional life. It seems to me that one of the most 
pitiful objects in this world is a made-up Christian 
minister — a manufactured preacher — a man whose in- 
dividuality has failed to find its appropriate nutri- 
ment and its appropriate field of demonstration in 
his office — a man who is useless where he is, and 
helpless elsewhere. 

Of the over-crowded professions of law and medi- 
cine, I speak with less hesitation, because I have to 
deal with less delicate motives of life. Men go into 
these professions to get a living, and get a position. 
Talk to a poor boy about becoming what people 
call " a self-made man," and he invariably thinks of 
becoming a lawyer or a physician. Go into any pre- 
paratory school: you will find that nearly every boy 
is aiming at one of these professions. Now if. you 
will reflect for a moment, you will come to the con- 
clusion that the number of really good lawyers and 
good physicians is comparatively small ; and when 
you have reached this conclusion, you will be able to 
see how many of them have mistaken their vocation. 

In the popular idea, the medical profession is the 
least showy and attractive of the three which we call 
learned ; but think how rare and peculiar the indi- 



Self-Help. 31 



viduality must be that is perfectly, or even measur 
ably, adapted to it. Think of the delicate insight 
that is necessary to judge of temperaments ; to de- 
tect the true relations of symptoms to diseases in 
different constitutions ; to decide when remedies will 
assist nature, and when they will not ; to draw the 
line between diseases and disorders ; and to discrimi- 
nate between bodily and mental derangements ! — 
Think of the tender sympathy that is necessary to 
him who stands beside woman in her hour of trial, 
and bends over the cradles of suffering children, and 
moves from house to house, to help poor humanity 
in its extremity ! Think of the strong, serene self- 
poise that he must sustain notwithstanding this sym- 
pathy — the firm equanimity and cheerful assurance 
which shall enable him to carry confidence and hope 
to every pillow, and pass through the most terrific 
trials of heart and nerve and skill in great emergen- 
cies ! Think of the pure heart, the unswerving honor, 
the Christian integrity, that should be his around 
whom the faith and the affections of five hundred 
families cluster ! — who enters into their life, shares 
their secrets, and has their dearest earthly interests 
in keeping ! Think of all this, and of much more 
that might be named ; and then think of the multi- 
tudes of men spawned upon the country every year 
by our medical institutions ; many of them Bob Saw 



32 Self- Help. 



yers and Ben Aliens — dissolute and unprincipled ; 
many of them rough, and obtuse ; some of them who 
have studied medicine simply because they were not 
adapted to law or theology — reminding one of the 
dog that was supposed to be good for rabbits be- 
cause he was good for nothing else ; think of all this, 
I say, and then marvel not that a distinguished pro- 
fessor — distinguished alike at the dissecting and the 
breakfast table — has said that if all the drugs in the 
w T orld were emptied into the sea, it would be infinitely 
better for mankind and infinitely worse for the fishes ! 

Notwithstanding this, the profession of medicine 
is one which I hold in profound and tender respect. 
My physician shall walk hand in hand with my pastor 
in my esteem, confidence, and affection ; he shall be 
welcome to my table, my hearth-stone, and my heart : 
but I utter no more than a self-evident truth, when 
I say that, because a man passes an examination 
before a corps of professors, he is not necessarily 
qualified for a physician, and that there are num- 
bers of the profession who sit in their offices, with 
their diplomas signed and sealed — aye, and framed 
and glazed before them — impatiently waiting for pa- 
tients, who vulgarly look upon their profession as a 
trade, and in whose medical care it would not be safe 
to risk a sick norse worth the sum of twenty-five 
dollars. 



Self- Help. 33 



Those who know more about the law than I do 
—worthy representatives of the legal profession-— 
will tell you that it requires a rare organization to 
comprehend its philosophy, to master its principles and 
the detail of its facts and forms, and to treat each 
new question as it arises by successful practice. But 
common observation is sufficiently suggestive upon 
this matter. If you will classify the lawyers of your 
acquaintance under these four heads, as I name them 
— lawyers of eminence (count them), lawyers of 
respectability (count them), lawyers of mediocrity 
(the task grows difficult), and lawyers of absolute 
inferiority (you can't count them), you will be able to 
judge how many of them have mistaken their profes- 
sion. A man- has no right to be inferior in his profes- 
sion, or, rather, he has no right to be in a profession in 
which he is inferior. Every man who can be a first-rate 
something — as every man can be who is a man at all 
— has no right to be a fifth-rate something ; for a fifth- 
rate something is no better than a first-rate nothing. 

I have sometimes fancied that the reason why so 
few are adapted to the three varieties of professional 
life which we are considering, is, that there was no 
original provision made for these classes of men. 
When Eve, our dear, over-tempted grandmother, did 
that which " brought death into the world and all our 
woe," she did that which brought physicians into tha 
2* 



34 Self-Help. 



world and all our lawyers and ministers. If our rac6 
had not fallen, it would not have needed ministers, 
certainly; and a race that would do without minis- 
ters, would offer a very unpromising field for the pro- 
fessions of law and medicine. I cannot help thinking 
that when the golden thousand years, which have been 
promised us, shall come, professional life will be very 
much less desirable than it is now. Every man will 
be as good as a minister, and every lawyer will be — 
a man; and the fawrite professional joke about the 
existence of an "alarming state of health" will be- 
come as serious as it is stale. 

But, at this day, it is in politics, quite as much as 
in the professions, that we see the effect of those un- 
wise counsels, given to the young, which have been 
noticed in this discussion. A poor boy rises to be- 
come a governor, as many a poor boy has worthily 
risen — as many a poor boy, I trust, may worthily rise ; 
or he has become a member of Congress, or achieved 
some higher or humbler position in political life. To 
the young mind, these titles and these positions are so 
represented as to appear to be the prizes for which 
their possessors have striven — as a fitting and natural 
object and reward of their labors. The young have 
not been taught by their self-appointed counsellors that 
manhood is the highest human estate ; that office can 
confer honor upon no man who is worthy of it, and 



Self-Help. 35 



that it will disgrace every man who is not. They 
have not been taught that to desire office, and to 
labor for it, for the sake of its honors and distinctions, 
is the meanest of all ambitions, and the most degrad- 
ing of all pursuits. They have not been taught tc 
distinguish between a self-made man and a self-made 
governor, and brought to understand that a self-made 
man is greater than a governor, and that a self-made 
governor is less than a man. Vital distinctions lib! 
these have been ignored ; and the consequence is, that 
boys without beards may be counted by thousands in 
this country who have already begun their dreams of 
political distinction — who look upon political distinc- 
tion as a legitimate aim of life, and who are, of course, 
growing up into demagogues. 

Among all the dangers which threaten this coun- 
try, I know of none so great as that which arises from 
the greed of small men for office, and the ease with 
which they obtain it. When the good and the worthy 
men of a nation like ours — men who do not need 
office, but men whom office sadly needs — become dis« 
gusted with politics, because of the inferior society 
and undignified contests into which it introduces 
them, the country may well tremble with apprehen- 
sion. When the stable gives law to the library, and 
the boy who does chores for his board puts his feet 
upon the parlor-table, and madam stays at home ta 



30 Self-Help, 



take care of the baby while Betty makes her calls and 
goes shopping, it is about time to begin to think of 
breaking up housekeeping. If the effect of small men 
in office be degrading to office and disastrous to lbs 
country, the effect of office upon small .men is quite 
as disastrous. There is never danger that office will 
spoil a man who is fit for office. No man who has been 
spoiled by an office — either by holding it or by losing 
it — was ever fit for it. A true man is just as much a 
man when his coat is off as when it is on. Take the 
coat from a scarecrow — which is simply a buudle of 
old clothes in office — and you spoil it. In all cases 
where office injures a man, it is too large for him, and 
he has no business with it. 

Let a man hold an office for any length of time, to 
which the individuality of his nature and character 
bears no legitimate relations, and he will be spoiled 
for the place in which he belongs. 

The country is full of these men, or wrecks of men 
— disappointed, soured, ruined — out of office, out of 
money, out of credit, out of courage, out at elbow r s, 
out in the cold, and usually, I regret to say, exceed- 
ingly dry. Ah ! if every man who holds, or has held, 
office in the land, were in the place where he belongs, 
wmat a supply of farm-laborers would be given to the 
great producing interest of this country ! What a 
convulsion w r ould run through the shoe-trade ! What 



Self-Help. 37 



a relief would be felt by our mercantile marine 1 
Nay, what an impetus would be given to stone* 
dressing in some of our public institutions ! 

In view of the sad effects of the indiscriminate 
rush into professional and political pursuits, we may 
well deplore those counsels that are stimulating the 
ambition of the young everywhere, and urging them 
into a life which, to half of them at least, must neces- 
sarily be unsuccessful and unhappy. God has made 
all men different one from another. Nature broke her 
die while moulding you and me as truly as she did 
while moulding Sheridan. The faculties of our souls 
differ as widely as the features of our faces and the 
forms of our frames. Thus, all true self-making must 
be carried on with relation to this characteristic self- 
hood. 

We see some men rising into a splendid manhood 
without the aid of teachers — carrying grandly up from 
their individual nature a corresponding individual char- 
acter, and finding their place and their work by an 
unsophisticated instinct. We see others, with the aids 
of schools and teachers, doing the same thing, perhaps 
even more grandly ; but we see men who went off 
with these latter, upon the same early educational 
cruise, coming back razeed — their characteristic upper- 
deck gone, and that which was their peculiar glory all 
cut away. One is led by his individuality up into a 



Self-Help. 



characteristic development and into his place ; the 
other permits his individuality to be blotted out, and 
takes, instead, the mixed, incongruous, and undi- 
gested and indigestible individualities of his pre- 
ceptors. 

Lest I be thought to undervalue what is popularly 
denominated education, I devote a few words specially 
to the subject. All systems of school and college 
education have the necessary imperfection of regard- 
ing and treating men in masses. Classes are formed, 
not upon a natural but upon an arbitrary basis. The 
young men who are to be preachers and physicians, 
and lawyers and merchants, and editors and farmers, 
and manufacturers and mechanics, are all put through 
the same text-books, the same exercises, the same dis- 
cipline. There is no plan of education, except the 
individual, which can obviate this disadvantage — for 
it obviously is a great disadvantage. !STow the man 
who educates, or makes, himself, by drawing to him- 
self that which his individuality craves and needs, and 
by putting himself to the work to which his individu- 
ality is adapted, has an advantage, at this single point, 
over him who goes through school and college, and 
yields himself w r holly to their undiscriminating disci- 
pline. There are disadvantages, however, on both 
sides. The habit of study — of mental labor — and tho 
general knowledge acquired in a systematic education, 



Self-Help. 3<J 



give the regular student great advantage over the 
irregular. 

Every student can make himself just as well in 
college as he can out, and he ought to be permitted — 
nay, made — to do it a great deal better. I pity the 
poor fellows who have to do their work alone ; and 
I pity quite as much those who permit themselves 
to be spoiled. As I have said before, scholarship is 
the measure of no man's power, though the opposite 
opinion seems to prevail among the teachers of schools 
and the faculties of colleges. Two men may be 
exactly equal in scholarship, one of whom will have 
no more power in the world than a baby, while the 
other will be a giant, shaking thrones, and moulding 
the lives and destinies of nations. The difference 
between these two men will be simply this : one will 
have sacrificed his individuality or self-hood to his 
scholarship ; the other will have appropriated his schol- 
arship as food for his individuality. Nearly all stu- 
dents, however, make themselves after they leave col- 
lege. Ten years after a man takes his bachelor's de- 
gree, he looks back upon what he learned in college, 
and the training he received there, as a very small part, 
and usually the least practical part, of his education. 
The moment he is beyond college- walls, he drops such 
books as do not feed him, and seizes upon those that 
do ; and, if he be not injured, he tvill immediately 



40 Self-Help. 



bring himself into his natural relation to the world's 
thinking, society, and affairs. 

It matters little by what mode a man develops his 
power, or by what path he finds his place in the world, 
provided he successfully does both. When John C. 
Heenan was preparing for his fight with Tom Sayers, 
he subjected himself to the most rigorous discipline 
required by the professors of the ring, while his antag-, 
onist took his own way in the matter, and did as he 
liked. When they came to their struggle, it was a 
question of pluck and muscle ; and, the pluck being 
equal, the larger muscle won, simply because it was 
larger, and not because it was better. So, in the con- 
flicts of life, it is a question of brains and power. It 
is not a question how much a man knows, but what 
use he can make of what he knows ; not a question of 
what he has acquired, and how he has been trained, 
but of what he is, and what he can do. 

In truth, it is in work that a man develops and 
makes himself, more than in any prescribed or indi- 
vidually chosen mode of training. A man can only 
become a good accountant — can only develop a good 
accountant's powers and aptitudes — by the duties of 
the counting-room. If I wished to make a good wood- 
chopper of a man whom I believed to be good for 
nothing else, I would not send him to a gymnasium 
as a preliminary process. I would put an axe into bin 



Self-Help. 41 



hand, direct him to the woods, and there let him work 
it out. Every man's powers have relation to some 
kind of work ; and whenever he finds that kind of work 
which he can do best — that to which his powers are 
best adapted — he finds that which will give him the 
best development, and that by which he can best build 
up, or make, his manhood. 

But there is a higher point from which this subject 
may be viewed ; and, in the moral as in the natural 
world, the higher the point of observation, the more 
extended and comprehensive the survey. Christianity, 
for illustration, regards man from a higher point than 
any system of philosophy ; yet few may be philoso- 
phers, while all may be Christians ; and it is better to 
be a Christian than to be a philosopher. So all cannot 
be preachers and doctors and lawyers, and authors and 
statesmen and orators ; yet all can be men : and it is 
better to be a man (begging pardon of the women) 
than to be anything else, for anything else may be 
something less. It is better to be a self-made man — ■ 
filled up according to God's original pattern — than to 
be half a man, made after some other man's pattern. 
Manhood overtops all titles. 

" The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
A man 's a man for a' that." 

Labor, calling, profession, scholarship, and artificial 



42 Self-Help. 



and arbitrary distinctions of all sorts, are incidents 
and accidents of life, and pass away. It is only man- 
hood that remains, and it is only by manhood that 
man is to be measured. When this proposition shall 
be comprehended and accepted, it will become easy to 
see that there is no such thing as menial work in this 
world. No work that God sets a man to do — no work 
to which God has specially adapted a man's powers — 
can properly be called either menial or mean. The 
man who blacks your boots and blacks them well, and 
who engages in that variety of labor because he can 
do it better than he can do anything else, may have, if 
he choose, just as sound and true a manhood as you 
have, not only after he gets through the work of his 
life, but now, with your boots in one hand and your 
shilling in the other. There is very much dirtier work 
done in politics, and sometimes in the professions, than 
that of blacking boots ; work, too, which destroys 
manhood, or renders its acquisition impossible. 

If I have attained the object of this lecture, I have 
presented to you, and impressed upon you, certain im- 
portant and intimately related truths, which I will 
briefly recount : 

First, That the faculty of self-help is that which 
distinguishes man from animals ; that it is the Godlike 
element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of 
his constitution. 



Self-Help. 43 



Second. That God gives every man individuality 
of constitution, and the faculty to achieve individuality 
of character, through an intelligent selection of food 
for the nourishment, and labor for the discipline and 
development, of his powers. 

Third. That those counsels which convey to young 
persons, indiscriminately, the idea that they can make 
anything of themselves that they choose to make, are 
pernicious, from the fact that many will choose to 
make of themselves that for which Nature never 
designed them, and will thus spoil themselves for the 
work to which their individualities are adapted. 

Fourth. That a man can never be well-made who 
is not, in reality, self-made ; whose native individuality 
is not the initial and the dominant fact in his develop- 
ment. 

Fifth. That it is a mistake to suppose that a man, 
in order to be self-made, must necessarily seek the 
peculiar development that will prepare him for pro- 
fessional or political life. 

Sh'ih. That no man has a right to be engaged in a 
calling or profession in which he occupies an inferior 
position, while there exists a calling or profession in 
which he may occupy a superior position ; and that 
no man is respectable when out of his place, however 
respectable the place he occupies may be. 

Seventh. That a man without a title is greater than 



44 Self-Help. 



a title without a man ; and that a self-made man may 
occupy, in honor and the noblest respectability, the 
humblest place in the world, if its duties are only 
those for which God designed his powers. 

There are other truths that I might add to this 
rehearsal, but they would be hardly more than modi- 
fications of these, or correlatives of these. I should 
be sorry, if, by presenting and insisting on them, I had 
dampened in a single bosom a worthy ambition. I 
should regret the awakening in any mind of questions 
that would prove fatal to a legitimate career. But 
facts are facts. I am not responsible for them ; and 
I am only anxious that no man, through influence of 
mine, use them to his harm. 

I account the loss of a man's life and individuality, 
through the non-adaptation or the rnal-adaptation of 
his powers to his pursuits, the greatest calamity, next 
to the loss of personal virtue, that he can suffer in this 
world I believe that a full moiety of the trials and 
disappointments that darken a world which, I am sure, 
was intended to be measurably bright and happy, are 
traceable to this prolific source. Men are not in their 
places. Women are not in their places. John is 
doing badly the work that William would do well, 
and William is doing badly the work that John would 
do well ; and both are disappointed, and unhap* 
py, and self-unmade. It is quite possible that John 



Self-Help. 45 



is doing Mary's work and Mary is doing John's 
work 

" Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these : ' it might have been.' " 

~N'ow I do not suppose we shall ever get the world 
all right on this matter. I do not suppose that all 
men will find the places for which they were de* 
signed, or that, in many instances, Maud will marry 
the Judge : but an improvement can be made ; and if 
an improvement ever shall be made, it will be through 
the inculcation of sounder views among the young. 

I am sick of the stupid cant by which stupid men 
strive to inflame the ambition of the youth that are 
placed under their direction. Far too many of our 
schools are little better than places for the develop- 
ment of mental and moral fever. Both boys and girls 
are stimulated, by the infernal machinery of prizes, and 
honorary appointments, and fear of disgrace, and such 
counsels as those upon which I have already remarked, 
to the most ambitious aspirations, the most extrava- 
gant expectations, and the most extraordinary exer- 
tions. I verily believe that there are but few boys in 
this country who have not had the idea drilled into 
them, by teachers or by books, that they can be any- 
thing in this world that they choose to be, or really 
try to become. 



46 Self-Help. 



The question which a youth is called upon to de- 
cide for himself, or which his parents and friends are 
called upon to decide for him, or assist him in decid- 
ing, is not what, with reference to the arbitrary stan- 
dard of personal and social values accredited by the 
world, he chooses to be, but what God has chosen to 
make him. Woe to that youth who finds his choice 
at war with that of his Maker — who sets his powers 
to a life-task which they were never intended to per- 
form ! 

If there be one man before me who honestly and 
contentedly believes that, on the whole, he is doing 
that work to which his powers are best adapted, I 
wish to congratulate him. My friend, I care not 
whether your hand be hard or soft ; I care not 
whether you are froln the office or the shop ; I care 
not whether you preach the everlasting gospel from 
the pulpit, or swing the hammer over the blacksmith's 
anvil ; I care not whether you have seen the inside 
of a college or the outside — whether your work be 
that of the head or that of the hand — whether the 
world account you noble or ignoble : if you have found 
your place, you are a happy man. Let no ambition 
ever tempt you away from it, by so much as a ques- 
tioning thought. I say, if you have found your place 
— no matter what or where it is — you are a happj 
man. I give you joy of your good fortune ; for if you 



Self-Help. 47 



do the work of that place well, and draw from it all 
that it can give you of nutriment and discipline and 
development, you are, or you will become, a man 
filled up — made after God's pattern — the noblest pro* 
duct of the world, — a self-made man. 



FASHIOE 



THE proverb that it is as well to be out of the 
world as out of fashion, is an old one and a 
mean one ; and it has so damaged the world that the 
alternative is come to be not so bad as it was. In* 
deed, it were better that a man should be out of the 
world than in some fashions. I do not speak with 
particular reference to dress, or manners, or social 
usage. It does not matter what a fool wears upon 
his back, or a flirt upon her head ; nor does it mat- 
ter how closely or how universally sensible and sober 
people imitate them, provided they are comfortable 
in their habit, and tradesmen drive a thrifty business, 
t is, of course, very sad to think how often good taste 
is perverted or ignored in the fabric and form of per- 
sonal drapery, and how frequently common sense and 
common honesty are offended by the social customs 
which fashion ordains ; but as uniformity to a consid- 
erable extent is desirable, let fashion be the law. It 



Fashion. 49 



is well enough that a silly queen reign over .an un- 
important realm. So long as fashion is employed in 
the shops of the tailor and the milliner, she is engaged 
in entirely innocent and legitimate business. I am 
aware that her freaks in these departments often make 
us all ridiculous ; but because they make us all ridicu- 
lous, there are none left to laugh at us — so we don't 
care. If fashion had only to do with forms and man- 
ners and methods which touch the person and the outer 
life, it would not be important as a subject of public 
discussion ; but it goes deeper than this, and becomes 
a power of no mean magnitude in the world's life — 
even disputing supremacy with Christianity in our 
civilization. 

It will be well for us, at starting, to obtain a suf- 
ficient idea of what fashion essentially is, and is not, 
even if we do not stop to define it fully. Fashion is 
not public opinion, or the result or embodiment of 
public opinion. It may be that public opinion will 
condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to 
do always, with the certainty of being right nine times 
in ten ; but fashion will place it upon the head of every 
woman in America, and, were it literally a crown of 
thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the impo- 
sition. Public opinion may be opposed to the wine- 
cup on the dinner-table, on festive occasions ; but 
fashion places and keeps it there. Kay, fashion and 



50 Fashion. 



public opinion, in all matters of form, are very often 
at variance ; yet fashion is now, and always has been, 
stronger than public opinion. Fashion is aristocratic 
— autocratic ; public opinion is democratic. Fashion is 
oased upon the assumed or the admitted right of some 
man, or of some class, to rule ; public opinion is the 
creature of universal suffrage. 

I say that fashion is based upon the assumed or the 
admitted right of some men to rule. There seems to 
be in the human mind a native reverence for those 
who are high in position and social privilege — a native 
willingness to follow this class in all matters which do 
not touch the soul's life too deeply. Nay, there is a 
natural deference, in the majority of minds, to bold 
assumption of superiority, and bold assumption of the 
right to rule. The sway of that class which is, or 
assumes to be, superior, is fashion. What its mem- 
bers wear, the world wears. What their habits are — 
at the table, in the assembly, on the street — the world 
adopts. The Empress of France has but to change the 
position of a ribbon to set all the ribbons in Christen- 
dom to rustling. A single word from her convulses 
the whalebone markets of the world, and sends a thrill 
to the most frigid zone, — alike of world and woman. 
The mustaches of the world wax as the Emperor's 
wax, and wane as the Emperor's are waxed. Coat- 
collars rise and fall, hats expand and contract their 



Fashion. 



brims, waistcoats change from black to white and 
from white to black, gloves blush and turn pale, in 
response to the monthly reports from the Tuileries. 
Fashion is based on the idea of caste ; and the sturdiest 
democrat in politics is not unfrequently its blindest 
devotee in his individual and social life. 

So, over all the broad realm of public opinion and 
public conscience, regardless of all recognised rules of 
taste and propriety, trampling all our democratic theo- 
ry and practice under feet, Fashion holds her undis 
puted sway — Fashion, the - self-ordained queen over 
subjects who bow to her, not only with no question 
as to her authority, but with joyful and unmeasured 
devotion of time and treasure. She holds in her hands 
the keys of social destiny. She blesses, and men and 
women smile ; she bans, and they weep. The place 
where she stands becomes thenceforth holy ground. 
That which she embraces is sacred ; that which she 
shuns is profane. 

We have fashionable sins and fashionable follies, 
fashionable churches and fashionable schools, fashion- 
able politics and fashionable medicine, fashionable 
authors and fashionable preachers, fashionable water- 
ing-places, fashionable hotels, fashionable streets and 
fashionable sides of streets. There is no department 
of life into which fashion does not thrust its hand, 
and there is no society, unless it be some such conser- 



52 Fashion. 



v;itory of ugliness as a Shaker community, that does 
not bow to it. Consequently, or concomitantly, we 
have a fashionable style of manhood and womanhood, 
a fashionable social life, and a fashionable literature ; 
and these, as opposed to democracy and a genuine 
Christian civilization, I propose to make the subject of 
my discussion. 

Here let us define terms a little further. I have 
spoken of fashion as opposed to democracy and Chris- 
tian civilization ; but by these latter I do not intend to 
indicate unlike or unrelated things. The popular defi- 
nition of democracy is something more and something 
better than " a glittering generality." Democracy is, 
in a most important sense, practical Christianity, and 
Christianity is, indeed, the life and soul of a pure 
democracy. The fundamental idea of Christian so- 
ciety is human equality, and the democratic root strikes 
into the same soil. Christianity and democracy alike 
crown men with equal rights and privileges, make 
them individually responsible, and pass through acci- 
dents of birth, circumstances, and position, to lay their 
claims and their awards upon every soul. They are 
so closely allied, that a Christian government must 
necessarily have the democratic element predominant ; 
and a democratic government only needs to lose its 
Christianity as a controlling power to become a despot- 
ism. Whei ever, and under whatever form, we find a 



Fashion. 53 



government that is essentially Christian, we shall find 
a government that is essentially democratic. I beg 
you to regard me, therefore, as speaking always and 
alike in behalf of Christian civilization and American 
democracy. There is not an influence of fashion 
which does not tell against both, and both are asso« 
ciated in every advantage gained by either. 

What is a fashionable style of manhood and 
womanhood ? It is not always the same in all 
places, but this is true of it everywhere, I think : 
that it never demands Christianity, or a regard for 
popular rights, as an essential element. I have never 
known a man to be denied the possession of a fash- 
ionable style of manhood on the ground that he was 
an infidel, or an atheist, or a despot, or an oppressor 
of the poor. I may say, indeed, that I have never 
known a thorough Christian or an honest democrat 
to be the possessor of a fashionable style of manhood. 
A lack of earnestness in any great or useful pursuit, 
a blind worship of rank and of those who hold it, a 
childish sensitiveness to the charms of personal adorn- 
ment, a disposition to magnify above things essential 
all matters of form and ceremony, a hatred of labor 
and contempt for the laborer, and a selSsh jealousy 
that walks hand in hand with an undisguised per- 
sonal vanity — these are the leading characteristics of 
what may be denominated a fashionable style of man* 



54 Fashion. 



hood and womanhood, — the basis of an outside life, 
ordered in obedience to an outside law. You will 
perceive that my definition will establish a great dif- 
ference between the fashionable man and the polite 
or gentle man. The fashionable man is often popu- 
larly mistaken for the polite man, and, I may say, is 
greatly interested in being mistaken for him. In- 
deed, he often mistakes himself for him. The dif- 
ference between a gentleman and a man of fashion 
is just as distinct as that between a man of fashion 
and an unpretending boor. The fashionable man may 
be, and often is, a brute in his instincts and in his 
secret life ; he may be a cringing puppy among his 
superiors ; he may be the meanest toady of power and 
place ; he may be intolerably insolent among those 
whom he deems his inferiors ; but certainly these 
things are not possible with a gentleman. 

It is not to be denied that genuine ladies and 
gentlemen frequently associate with men and women 
who have no farther claim to consideration than that 
they are fashionable, or that ladies and gentlemen 
give more or less countenance and coloring to fash- 
ionable life ; but there is no man in all the world 
more conscious than the purely fashionable man that 
there is a style of manhood above his, and a style of 
social life in which he has no home save as a favored 
or a fawning guest. He is only an imitation of some- 



Fashion. 55 



thing which he envies. The gentleman is solid ma? 
hogany ; the fashionable man is only veneer. 

The fashionable man, either rich and powerful of 
allied with those who are, makes social preeminence 
the end of his life. He dreads poverty, but bows low 
to vulgar and insolent wealth. All his affinities run in 
sordid channels. He meanly worships the rich and 
the powerful, the titled and the gently-bred, and 
regards all contact with other classes as contamina- 
tion. His moralities are the fashionable moralities, 
whatever those may happen to be. If a corrupt and 
licentious court be the ruling influence, corruption and 
licentiousness become fashionable with him. If the 
leading minds are mockers at the Christian religion, 
he treats it with irreverence and contempt. He calls 
things good and bad by fashionable names. An ear- 
nest Christian with him is a bigot ; preaching is cant ; 
prayer is a sort of Puritan snuffle ; a life of self-sacri- 
fice to duty is fanaticism ; godliness, gloom ; conscien- 
tious strictness in religious duty or observance, the 
being " deeply, darkly, beautifully blue." On the 
other hand, a libertine is only a man of the world ; 
a rich and well-dressed sot only lives too fast, or has 
an infirmity which renders it necessary that he should 
be seen before dinner to be appreciated. Swindling 
by himself and friends is regarded as sharp practice, 
and obtaining clothes without paying for them, " doing 



56 



Fashion. 



the tailor," — a very sad joke to one of the parties, but 
traditionally a good one with the other. 

~Now for a glance at another picture. Here and 
there in the world — more numerous in the aggregate 
than those know who do not love their society — 
there are men and women whose lives are ordered 
from within ; whose motive and regulating force is 
love of Grod and love of men ; who are loyal to con- 
science, earnest in all benevolent enterprise, self-sacri- 
ficing, most happy in the communication of happiness, 
without jealousy and without hypocrisy ; who esteem 
it a more honorable thing to forgive an injury than to 
resent one ; who are humble in their estimate of them- 
selves, and who in honor prefer one another. This, 
very briefly, is what I understand to be the Christian 
style of manhood and womanhood. 

Now the difference between this and the fashion- 
able style is certainly the difference between antago- 
nistic opposites. The man of fashion is exclusive, and 
has no sympathy with any but his class or clique. The 
Christian is universal in his sympathies, embracing in 
his prayer and in his charitable endeavor every nation, 
class, and individual. One seeks only to make the 
world useful to himself; the other, to make himself 
useful to the world. One seeks for, or seizes, priv- 
ilege ; the other is happiest in ministry. One is a 
despot ; the other is a democrat. 



Fashion. 5^ 



If we approach our second point in the discussion 
— fashionable social life — we shall find that that which 
is true of one is true of many. Social life is the 
interflow of the life of individuals; but social life has 
individuality. It has its creeds, customs, and conven- 
tionalities. It has its store and style of power. It 
has its currently understood, but capriciously fluctuat- 
ing, laws. It is a distinct, characteristic thing, to be 
looked at, turned over, and talked about. If I were 
called upon to give an opinion upon any form of social 
life, I should first wish to learn the object of its wor- 
ship, and, second, the object of its pursuit. I know 
that a social life which worships God, and pursues the 
good of men, is a Christian social life ; and I know 
just as well that a social life which worships money, 
and pursues social distinction as its end, is, in spirit 
and in fact, an aristocracy. It may have no titles, it 
may have no civil privileges ; but, wherever its power 
can go, — into all matters, social and religious, political 
and military, — it will go with the characteristic influ- 
ence of an aristocracy. 

- Such is the fashionable social life of America. If 
it boast no hereditary titles, it is not because it does 
not desire and worship them. If it have no civil priv- 
ileges and prerogatives, it is not because it does not 
feel itself entitled to them. It is, in itself, the result 
of a conspiracy on the part of wealth and power for 
3* 



58 Fashion, 



achieving and holding social distinction — elevation 
above the masses of men and the associations* of la* 
bor. It separates itself from the commonwealth of 
humanity so far as it may, and believes in its right 
to rule and use men for its own aggrandizement and 
convenience. 

This, fashionable social life has, as I have said, its 
creeds, customs, and conventionalities. Thronged with 
jealousies within itself, it is jealous of all outside en- 
croachment and interference. It has its own code of 
morals, which, more or less strict according to circum- 
stances, is never up to the Christian standard. I do 
not believe that there is any fashionable life in the 
world that can justly be called Christian. If I go to 
the great cities, or even to the little cities, and witness 
the idleness, the intrigues, the frivolities, and the gen- 
eral self-seeking which characterize the fashionable 
social life that exists there ; or, if I look in upon the 
wanton wastefulness and the worse than childish greed 
for display at a fashionable summer resort, I can find 
nothing that will remind me that man has either a 
nature or a destiny better than a beast, — nothing that 
indicates to me that man, as man, has common need of 
ministry and common privilege. The humanity within 
me is insulted by assumptions of superiority which 
Agnore the regal supremacy of manhood. 

The most intimate sympathy to be found in purely 



Fashion. 59 



fashionable society is that which comes through its low 
tone of morality. Wealth and power and place are 
considered sufficient in all fashionable social life to pal- 
liate, or atone for, almost every crime of which a mar 
can be guilty. Morality is a matter of secondary im 
portance ; and there is nothing better understood than 
the conspiracy among fashionable people to sustain 
each other in practices which are only justifiable by 
their own low standard of morals. None of us will 
be obliged to tax the memory beyond measure to call 
up the image of a notorious libertine, petted by fash- 
ionable mothers of fashionable daughters, because he 
occupies a high place in fashionable society. None of 
us will be obliged to go out of his own neighborhood to 
meet with those whose sole claim to a place in fashion- 
able society is based upon the possession of money won 
by gigantic frauds, or corrupt contracts, or oppression 
of the poor. I know of but one garment which the 
fashionable social life of this country borrows of Chris- 
tianity. It is that ample mantle of charity which cov 
ers a multitude of sins — particularly fashionable sins. 

Fashionable society has always been the ally and 
Bupport of every instituted and profitable wrong. Let 
any wrong become the permanent source of wealth 
and power to any class of men, and fashionable society 
will at once become its defender. We have in the his< 
tory of the passing times a competent illustration of 



GO Fashion. 



this fact. If there be in all the world an institution 
which is both unnatural and unchristian, you will 
agree with me that it is human slavery; yet fashion- 
able social life has always been in friendly alliance 
with it. The fashionable society of the North has 
meanly bowed down to and envied that class at the 
South whose wealth and position have been based 
upon the possession and the profits of human slaves ; 
and even at this late day you will find the two classes 
sympathetic. With the exception of a few wretched 
politicians, there have been in the North no sympa- 
thizers with the great rebellion, undertaken on behalf 
of human slavery, not found in fashionable society. 
There has not been a time since the commencement 
of the great rebellion when it needed more than the 
striking of the fashionable class out of Baltimore to 
make that city as loyal as the city of Boston. Almost 
the only element of Northern society that was at first 
sympathetic with treason was the fashionable. In the 
city of Washington — the capital of this great nation — 
fashionable society even now bemoans the loss of the 
lordly swaggerers from whom for whole generations it 
had received its life-blood and law. By the means 
and through the influence of these men this society 
had made all reform unfashionable, made labor unfash- 
ionable, made Northern men unfashionable, made hu- 
ttian freedom unfashionable, made Christianity and con- 



Fashion. 61 



science unfashionable, made democracy itself unfasb 
ionable. 

There sits in the White House, to-day, a -most un 
fashionable man. His hands are clean from all suspi- 
cion of bribes, — but he is unfashionable. No President 
since Washington has sought so little to compass pri- 
vate ends and promote personal ambitions as he, — but 
he is unfashionable. He has but a single aim, which 
has actuated him through all the weary months of his 
public life — the restoration of national unity, — but he 
is unfashionable. With an army numbering a million 
of nobler and braver men than were ever before mar- 
shalled upon the field — an army finer than any king or 
emperor ever saw — and with a navy that within a year 
of the time of its creation revolutionized the modes of 
naval warfare throughout the world — head of a realm 
of thirty millions, and presiding calmly, conscientiously, 
and wisely over the history of the most eventful period 
of the national existence, — he remains a most unfashion- 
able man. Honesty, integrity, patriotism, unflinching 
devotion to the great cause into which he has cast his 
life, boldness to do what he believes to be right, char- 
itable moderation toward all, — none of these things 
have made him fashionable. Nay, occupying a posi- 
tion of moral grandeur which we cannot possibly 
apprehend, as it will be conceived by the future his« 
torian, there are fashionable people about him who 



62 Fashion. 



regard him with ineffable contempt ; fashionable peo- 
ple who owe to his moderation and large-hearted char- 
ity their immunity from iron gratings and hempen 
cravats. Let the nation thank God, that whatever else 
President Lincoln has been, he has not been a fashion- 
able man. 

Fashionable society has not only been the defender 
of every system of profitable wrong, in this and other 
countries, but it has been the constant opposer and 
re viler of humane and Christian reform. The fashion- 
able instinct naturally rises against reform — against 
any scheme which tends to elevate the people, and 
relieve them from the rule of those who give law to 
fashionable life. Reforms are always democratic, and 
are based upon a recognition of the equality of men; 
and fashionable society can possibly have no sympathy 
with them. There is hardly a fact in all history more 
patent than this : that in the undertaking and prosecut- 
ing any humane or Christian reform, the fashionable 
class are never to be relied upon for aid, while their 
opposition in one form or another is certain. While 
this is true, it is just as true that the rule of Christian 
society, its motive and regulating force, is universal 
benevolence, which finds no plane of action and no rest 
save in the sentiment of universal brotherhood — the 
basis of a perfect democracy. So distinct are the 
spheres and the atmospheres of these two forms of 



Fashion. 63 



social life, that the Christian gentleman finds nothing 
in fashionable society for the satisfaction of his social 
nature, and the fashionable man finds nothing in genu- 
ine Christian social life which is not to him a burden 
and a bore. Sometimes — quite universally, indeed — ■ 
compromises are effected between fashionable .and 
Christian social life, for the accommodation of worldly 
people with tender consciences and Christian people 
with tough consciences ; but compromises of this char- 
acter are always surrenders upon the wrong side. 
Christian society, by consenting to an alliance with it, 
consents to neutralization by it. It is the old and 
everlasting impossibility of serving God and Mam- 
mon. 

We, as Americans, profess to be a Christian nation. 
We profess to believe that we live under a democratic 
government, and that we are democrats ourselves. 
We should be startled to learn that we had really been 
governed for years by an aristocracy; but what are 
the facts? How much, for the past fifty years, has 
Christian social life in Washington influenced the 
legislation of Congress? You know that I ask a 
question to be sadly laughed at. You know that 
fashionable society at the national capital has always 
been able to secure the performance of its behests. In 
3lose alliance with every profitable wrong, it has been 
able to lord it over the Christian element, which : 



64 Fashion. 



weaker or stronger, has always been present. It has 
branded good, conscientious, Christian men as fanatics, 
and they have walked the streets of the national eapi- , 
tal despised, proscribed, alone. It has contemptuously 
barred its doors against those whom posterity will 
number among its saints and its heroes. It has 
laughed to scorn those who have dared to speak of 
a higher than human law, and coupled their names 
with the foulest epithets which malice could invent. 
Arrogant, selfish, exclusive, meddlesome, the fashion- 
able society of Washington has used the machinery 
of the government for its own support and aggrandize- 
ment. No unchristian, and oppressive measure has 
ever found its slimy way through Congress, that was 
not either engineered or aided by the fashionable 
society of Washington. It has kept its gilded wares 
constantly in the political market. They have been 
hawked about by scheming women, who have boasted 
of successes won by flatteries and favors which de- 
graded them and all who received them. It has never 
been the fashion jto be virtuous in public affairs at 
Washington. It has never been the fashion to be 
devoted to the interests of the people there. Moral- 
ity, integrity, religion, democracy, patriotism — these 
have only been names in Washington ; and the men 
who have really believed in them, and who have 
undertaken to incorporate that which" they represent 



Fashion. • 65 



into their living and doing, have been regarded with' 
pity or derision. 

I am smitten by wonder when I think of the powei 
which bold assumption has in the world — when I sea 
how it moulds the hearts and bends the wills of men. 
I am smitten by wonder when I see how the masses 
of men bow to the assumptions of fashionable society. 
I see everywhere a class of men who assume to give 
the law of social distinction to the communities in 
which they live. This law, so far as it reaches, is 
supreme. The great and the little, the rich and the 
poor, the old and the young, bow to it, and regulate 
themselves and their relations by it. It ignores Chris- 
tianity, moral worth, intellectual culture, personal 
loveliness — everything most prized in the soul's life 
and loves and friend ships— and decides upon the posi- 
tions of men and women by its own rule. It shuts 
out from the circle of its sympathies and support a 
good man because he is poor ; it bids a bad man wel- 
come because he is rich. It ignores the charms of 
a beautiful and gifted woman because she earns her 
bread ; it accepts an old and ugly remnant of an old 
and ugly family because she manages to live upon 
her friends. It kicks the young man of modest worth 
and noble aims and industries, and kisses the idle 
lout whose worth is on his back and whose graces are 
in his heels. It receives a religious sect into favor 



06 



Fashion, 



and frowns upon all others. In every variety of life 
which it enters, it assumes the preeminence, bending 
to nothing, and deliberately opposing itself to Chris- 
tianity as the dominant element in our civilization. 

But I hasten to the third point which I have pro- 
posed to discuss, viz., fashionable literature. There is 
fashion in literature. Nowhere, indeed, is it more 
exclusive or despotic ; nowhere is it more mischievous. 
I make the unqualified statement, that fashion has 
always insisted on the divorce of Christianity from 
elegant literature. It has patronized with a lavish 
hand the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome, 
with all their classical and cursed abominations ; and, 
in modern days particularly, it has treated with dainty 
tenderness the Korans and Yedas and Shasters of 
swarthier and more insignificant heathen. I will, if 
you please, admit that, sometimes, as a matter of 
favor, it has accorded to the sacred writings of the 
Jews a place by the side of the sacred writings of the 
Hindoos. Nay, I will go further, and confess that 
the name of God is sometimes used by the most 
fashionable writers as a sonorous old noun for the 
rounding of a period, and that " the sweet Christ," or 
" the Spotless One," as He is patronizingly called, is 
worked up very handsomely for ornamental purposes 
in works of sentiment. But Jesus Christ, the personal 
representative of Jehovah on the earth — the very cen 



Fashion. 67 



tre and soul of that civilization which embraces the 
moral, social, and political salvation of the human race — 
its breath, bread, and life-blood — is a name never hearti- 
ly' spoken by the writers whom Fashion recognizes a? 
her own. It is not fashionable to write a Christian 
book. It is not fashionable to read a Christian book. 
To these two facts ambition, when yoked with genius, 
has almost uniformly bowed, and, having performed its 
fashionable work, gone forward to its fashionable re- 
ward. In vain have I searched the pages of fashiona- 
ble literature, including much of what we call elegant 
letters, to find what has seemed to me to be the genuine 
Christian element. In all the exquisite creations which 
have found life and immortality in fashionable fiction, 
I have never met one, so far as I can remember, that 
was put forward as a genuine embodiment of Christian 
piety. Lovely women we have "had in abundance; 
women of beauty and brilliancy and virtue ; women 
of amiable dispositions and noble instincts ; but of 
women whose whole lives were ordered by 'Christian 
principle, by conscience, by the love of God and the 
love of humanity, alas! how few! — alas ! none! 

Here and there some sweet-faced, sad-souled de- 
votee has been developed and described, not because 
she was pious, but because she was picturesque, and 
never with sympathetic interest on the part of the 
writer. We have plenty of caricatures of Christian 



58 Fashion. 



ministers, and Christian societies, and Christian reforms ; 
but never any examples of what the writer accepts as 
the genuine article. We have had Chadbands and 
Stigginses, and Dominie Sampsons and Cream Cheeses 
— reverend fops and reverend fools without number ; 
and these men have been thrust forward in all fashion- 
able fiction as the representatives of Christianity. 

ISTow, mark you, I do not complain that these char- 
acters are presented. I do not believe in shielding a 
humbug because he wears a white cravat, nor do I 
claim that in every work of fiction a writer is bound 
to represent both sides of every subject which he in- 
troduces. What I complain of, is, that fashionable 
writers, throughout their whole lives, criticise and 
caricature Christian men, institutions, reforms, and 
practices, which, on the basis of their own ideal, 
they never seek to embody and represent. They are 
fond of exposing Christian pretension. I find no fault 
with this, for if there is anything that deserves to be 
held up to ridicule and scorn, it is Christian preten- 
sion. This is not my complaint at all. I complain 
that, for anything to be found in their works to the 
contrary, they consider all Christianity pretension, and 
all Christians pretenders. They never introduce Chris- 
tian character, Christian principle, Christian love, and 
Christian purpose, as golden elements in literary crea- 
tion and composition. 



Fashion. 69 



Let me illustrate. Charles Dickens is a fashionable 
author, and he is not only fashionable, but popular, and 
popular, too, with the Christian public. Now no man 
can admire more ardently than I do the genius of 
Charles Dickens. No man, according to the measure 
of his nature, can sympathize more thoroughly than 
I do with the many lovely characters and the sweet 
humanities which throng the path of his delightful 
pen ; but, so far as I can learn from his writings, that 
pen, thrilling to its nib with the genius which inspires 
it, has never written, in good, honest -text, the name 
of Jesus Christ. And when I say this, I mean all that 
my words can compass and convey. The Christian 
element is not to be found in his writings. Christian- 
ity is not brought forward, either as a cure or a miti- 
gation of the evils which his eyes are so ready to see, 
and the woes which touch him with so quick a sym- 
pathy. You will find in Dickers travesties of mission- 
ary enterprise, and ridicule of various schemes of Chris- 
tian reform; but nowhere, so far as I can remember, 
any evidence that he either loves Christianity, or be- 
lieves in it, as his own and the world's consolation and 
cure 

I havo not read Thackeray to find him better, even 
when I take into account the sulphurous satire which 
he points, with such deadly fire at the very society 
which makes him fashionable. It is the fashion to 



'0 Fashion. 



read Thackeray, and the fashion to admire him, though 
he is far less popular than his rival ; and we have to 
thank him for his exposure of the shallowness and 
shabbiness of the fashionable life which engages his 
caustic pen ; but he has never, so far as I know, admin- 
istered any medicine but satire. He has never shown, 
by direct teaching or by any form of art, the radical 
cure for the life which he so keenly satirizes and so 
thoroughly despises. Image-breaker he may be, but 
no reformer. With his pen of gold he probes every 
social sore with merciless precision ; but he leaves it 
black with his own ink, and unblessed by any balm. 

I name these men only because they are representa- 
tive men, — because most of the fashionable novel-writ- 
ing of the time consists of Dickens and Thackeray 
diluted and flavored according to the feeble necessities 
of the producers and the flatulent mental habit of the 
consumers. All that is and all that aims to be 
genuinely fashionable, ignores Christianity as the ma- 
trix of a true literature, and discards the social and 
political systems which are its offspring as its choicest 
framework and material. 

We have an abundance of theology ; we have 
countless volumes of excellent practical sermons — duly 
labelled, that no one shall mistake them for elegant 
literature ; we have a planet-full of pious stories, 
written by goodish men and women, whose stupidity 



Fashion. 71 



has nullified any honor to Christianity which they may 
have intended, — but only here and there has genuine 
genius, inspired and impelled by Christianity, worked 
freely and honestly in literary creation and composi- 
tion ; only here and there has Christian life been 
carved out of the world's life, and thrown into a 
form of art which reveals its transcendent virtue and 
beauty. 

It must be known to you that there is a class of 
writers in every country who assume to be the fashion 
in literature. You will find them clustered around a 
literary institution, or a literary magazine, or united in 
a literary club or cabal. They constitute what irrev- 
erent persons have denominated a mutual-admiration 
society. We know little of the tie which unites them, 
but we know that no plummet-line is long enough to 
sound the depths of their self-complacency, and that 
no common understanding can understand the under- 
standing that exists between them. We know that 
while they criticise each other in private, they toast 
each other in public, and quote each other in print, 
and that when one of them dies, they sow his grave 
with eulogies that are kept constantly thrifty by 
copious showers of Maynard & ISToyes. We know 
that neither man nor woman is regarded as having 
any position, or any right, in the field of letters with- 
out their indorsement, and that neither man nor 



72 Fashion. 



woman can obtain that indorsement without the 
acknowledgment of their supreme authority. We 
know that their principal purpose is the nursing 
and rearing of reputations — the conservation and 
canonization of names ; and that literary art is never 
regarded by them as only true and legitimate when 
it is made the minister of a Christian civilization. 
We know that they regard, or pretend to regard, the 
most indifferent productions of their sacred circle as 
the offspring of genius, and that all men who fail to 
detect in the productions themselves the reason for 
their good opinion, are regarded by them as devoid 
of literary judgment. And more than all this : wc 
know that a modest and self-distrustful public volun- 
tarily disfranchises itself by acknowledging merits 
which it does not see and cannot feel, simply be- 
cause it is the fashion to admire or to admit them. 
Y^e know also that these literary fashionables have 
multitudes of abject worshippers who regard them 
fearfully from afar, and others who will crawl upcn 
their bellies for a bow, and become their toadies and 
tools for a single glass of their Madeira. 

All this we know, and yet how well we know that 
we must go outside of this circle to find the Christian 
power in literature that is to move the world toward 
the religious and political millennium. We never find 
in this circle a power effluent in all directions upon the 



Fashion. 73 



world of life around it, to melt and mould, to elevate 
and bless, but a beautiful show of gifts and graces that 
have conspired together to attract the admiration of 
tributary gazers. 

Now I put it to your candor to say whether it is 
not true, that, in the opinion of this fashionable lite- 
rary cabal, this self-constituted court of literature, reli- 
gion hurts a book? Is not hearty, practical, devo- 
tional Christianity regarded by this court as a foreign 
element ? a something which is not at home in elegant 
literature at all ? Is it not true that any literary work 
which is burdened with a Christian mission is regard- 
ed as laboring under a disadvantage ? Answer these 
questions as I know you must answer them, if you are 
well informed, and you yield essentially all that I claim 
touching the influence of fashionable literature upon 
Christian civilization. 

It is possible that you will tell me that there are 
some truly Christian writers who are fashionable. 
There are, indeed, beautiful names that rise to you 
and to me, before which even the fashionable bow 
with reverent admiration. I think of one whose gen- 
ius was angelic ; who swept all the chords of human 
passion with fingers that shook with the stress of their 
inspiration ; who soared and sang as never woman 
soared and sang before; whose every uttered word 
leaped from her lips like a bird, radiant in plumags 
4 



74 Fashion. 



and glorious in music ; yet whose heart was the dwell- 
ing-place of an all-controlling, all-subordinating Chris- 
tian purpose. She looked out upon humanity with a 
love ineffable even to her. She looked up to Heaven 
with a Christian adoration to which even her marvel- 
lous gift of language could give no fitting expression. 
Her whole being throbbed and sparkled like the sea, 
stretching its pure, life-giving sympathies around the 
world, and tossing evermore its white hands toward 
the stars. Ah! yes; she soared and sang as never 
woman soared and sang before ; soared and sang at 
last, English sky -lark though she was, into the golden 
dawn of Italian nationality, till the attraction of the 
earth was surpassed, and -Heaven drew her home. 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning! How the pretentious 
stuff that drapes our mutual admiration societies be- 
comes fustian in the presence of her queenly robes ! 

I think of a name nearer home than this — the name 
of one now living — one of whom I may not speak in 
such terms as her consecrated genius deserves, because 
she lives. You have read her books, for they have 
been read in many lands and many languages — read 
more widely than the works of any other living writer. 
In these works she has incorporated the religion of 
Jesus Christ, as it is incorporated in her own life and 
character. She has devoted her magnificent genius 
to the cause of Christian reform, and wields a pen 



Fashion. 75 



whose power one would as little think of questioning 
as the power of the sun or the lightning. Under the 
inspiration of Christianity she writes for humanity, 
entering as a Christian power into life and character 
wherever books are read and hearts are open ; and she 
sits to-day the queen of a realm, all of which she has 
either subjugated or created. In your hearts you 
have already spoken the name of Harriet Beecher 
Stowe. 

There are others, still, whose names come to you 
and to me. I might pronounce the name of our 
Gabriel in drab — trumpet-tongued for the right, trum- 
pet-tongued against the wrong ; loving the poor man 
more than the rich, loving both more than himself, 
loving God more than all — John Greenleaf Whittier. 
I might speak of him whose catholic sympathies and 
whose quick sense of Christian truth and love and jus- 
tice are as evident in his "Biglow Papers" as in his 
golden " Vision of Sir Launfal " — James Russell Low- 
ell. I might speak of Charles Kingsley, a great Chris- 
tian genius, or of John Ruskin, the peerless scholar 
and Christian leader of art, or of Dr. John Brown, 
whose "Spare Hours" have linked their Christian 
arms with your spare hours, I trust, and helped them 
heavenward. 

Now do you ask me if these are not fashionable 
writers ? Do you ask me why writers whom fashion- 



Fashion. 



able people praise are not fashionable? Simply be« 
cause they are Christian and catholic in their spirit, 
their sympathies, their associations, and their objects, 
and are as little dependent on fashion for their reward 
as they are influenced by it in their work. They have 
a genius which commands respect and reverence even 
among the fashionable, in spite of the Christian inspi- 
ration which informs and the Christian purpose which 
possesses it. They have nothing in common with 
those whose sole aim is to gather a reputation and 
make a name. They may be fashionable in a certain 
negative sense, perhaps, — in the fact that it would be 
unfashionable to betray such lack of common sense as 
to deny their genius. Do you suppose that fashion- 
able writers, and the lovers of fashionable literature, 
love the objects for which Mrs. Browning and Mrs. 
Stowe have labored? that they sympathize with Mr. 
Whittier and Mr. Lowell and Mr. Kingsley ? Not at 
all. They look upon all of them as amiable fanatics, 
and, while they acknowledge their genius, regard their 
unselfish devotion to the world of men and women, 
and God's truth in its relations to them, as an element 
of weakness. 

I have said that it is not fashionable to put Chris- 
tianity into elegant literature. I may and I should say, 
here and now, that it is not fashionable to put it into 
a literary address. It is not fashionable for an unpro* 



Fashion. 77 



fessional literary man to deliver such an address as 1 
am now delivering before a literary audience. Have 
we not men clothed in black and choked with white 
cravats who are paid for this sort of service ? Have 
we not temples built for it ? Is there not one day in 
seven, ordaineql for religious purposes from the founda- 
tion of the world, in which these temples are thrown 
open that these men may be vocal in their vocations ? 
These Christian addresses are things that we get done 
by the year! Is not butter furnished by the season ? 
Are not gas and water paid for by the quarter ? Every 
man to his work in the regular way. No handling of 
Christianity by common hands, especially literary hands, 
on ordinary occasions, especially literary occasions. 
" Ah ! don't mingle " — you remember the familiar music. 
Now, my idea of the Christian religion is, that it is 
an inspiration and its vital consequences — an inspira- 
tion and a life — God's life breathed into a man and 
breathed through a man — the highest inspiration and 
the highest life of every soul which it inhabits; and, 
furthermore, that the soul which it inhabits can have 
no high issue which is not essentially religious. There 
are those who make it their business to promulgate 
dogmatic Christianity : let them fulfil their calling in 
the proper time and place. There are adepts in scrip- 
tural exposition : let them exercise their gifts on all 
proper occasions. There are earnest souls whose per- 



78 Fashion. 

sonal exhortations have power to move men to a reli* 
gious life : God speed them everywhere. It is of none 
of these things or of these men that I speak. My point 
is, that a man in whom religion is an inspiration, who 
has surrendered his being to its power, who drinks it, 
breathes it, bathes in it, cannot speak otherwise than 
religiously. The magician can draw an uncounted 
variety of wines from a single flask, but the alcoholic 
base runs through them all. So the religious soul may 
give forth utterances of various forms and flavors, but 
one spirit imparts to each its vitality and power. 

We never know a man's measure till we take it for 
his coffin. You will find among fashionable writers 
such wearing of high-heeled boots, such mounting upon 
stilts, such sporting of tall hats and riding of high 
horses, that you will be obliged to get them down and 
get the tape upon them before you can tell how much 
space they will occupy. Their names will shine upon 
the coffin-lid, and they will bury well, and stay buried ; 
but no grave can hold a fruitful Christian genius. We 
say that Mrs. Browning is dead, w r e say that Mrs. 
Browning is buried ; but we know that she lives, and 
that she walks the earth, and wings the air, and sits 
with us here to-night. The earth is not broad enough, 
the earth is not deep enough, to bury Mrs. Brown- 
ing in. 

I have thus attempted to expose to you the nature 



Fashion. 79 



and the tendency of fashion, as it exists in personal 
character, in social life, and in literature. I have 
endeavored to show you that it is essentially aristo* 
cratic, and must therefore be opposed to a genuine 
Christian civilization and a true democracy. It practi- 
cally denies the rightful supremacy of Christianity in 
every field, ignores its grand, levelling truths, and 
maintains, through corrupt convention, an independent 
standard of morals. It is exclusive, devoted to clique 
and caste, and thoroughly sympathetic with all systems 
and schemes of life and all forms of society and gov- 
ernment which take power and profit from the many 
and give them to the few. 

In this great hoar of our national history, I have 
chosen this subject that a useful lesson may be won 
from it. I have tried to speak not as a politician or a 
partisan, but as a philosopher, who believes in the 
beneficence of democratic institutions and the conser- 
vative power of Christianity. This democratic gov- 
ernment of ours was founded by Christian men, on 
Christian principles. It can only be perpetuated by 
Christian men, on Christian principles. Whenever it 
passes into the hands of an aristocratic class, which 
denies the rights of the meanest man, and sustains 
itself by the oppression and disfranchisement of the 
laboring masses, that moment it must cease to exist, 
and a despotism will take its place. A class that 



80 Fashion, 



denies a black man the privilege of a man, will deny 
a powerless white man the same — always and every- 
where. 

The struggle in this country is now and has been 
for years between a democracy with a Christian con- 
science, and an aristocracy fanatically devoted to 
human slavery. The rebellion originated in a domi- 
nating class, with which no Christian democrat in this 
country can possibly have any sympathy ; and the 
power of that class must be destroyed, utterly, or 
a Christian democracy cannot possibly be the domi- 
nant power on this continent. 

The sympathy and the support which the rebellion 
has received from the upper classes of Great Britain 
and continental Europe, have been natural and inevita- 
ble. The aristocratic classes of Europe recognize the 
nature of the struggle, and take the side of the aristo- 
cratic class of this country. I do not wonder at it ; I 
do not blame them for it ; and I do not care a straw 
about it. We are fighting the great battle of the 
people — the great battle of democratic and Christian 
equality against the combined aristocracies of the 
world, and all that fashionable class, at home and 
abroad, which sympathizes with them. And when the 
day of our victory shall come, as it will come, let us 
remember that if we would secure the national safety 
forever, we must thenceforward and forever make 



Fashion. 81 



Christianity popular. I do not say that we must 
make Christiauity fashionable, for it cannot be, in 
the nature of things. We must make it popular, and 
compel every political caucus, convention, candidate, 
and clique, to bend to it and obey it. When that 
time shall come, we shall have arrived at the political 
millennium, — and the time must come. 



4* 



WORK AND PLAT. 



THE human race presents no aspect more interest* 
ing than that which it wears in its apron and 
shirt-sleeves. There breathes no nobler music under 
heaven than the roar of a great city, in which the din 
of wheels, and the clangor of hammers, and the cries 
of the hawker and the auctioneer, and the hurried 
tread of uncounted thousands upon the pavement, are 
blunted and crushed and blended into a sublime mono- 
tone, that rises and swells, and surges and subsides, 
from day to day, through all the prosperous centuries. 
There is nothing more wonderful than that laby- 
rinthine net-work of human interests, spread finely 
over a continent and more broadly enveloping a world, 
out from whose indistinguishable intersections run the 
daily efforts of the earth's thronging millions. 

There is an office for every man, and a man for 
every office. One builds a ship, another turns a spool ; 
one paints a madonna, another decorates a toy ; one 
attends a king, another grooms a horse ; one sends a 



Work and Play. 83 



ship to the Indies, another gleans the offal of the 
streets ; one writes a book, another places it in type ; 
one conducts a railroad-train over a hundred miles . 
another trundles a wheel-barrow up and down a plank. 
Millions live among the whirl of spindles and the clash 
of looms ; and other millions ply the needles that fash- 
ion their fabrics. On cotton-fields and corn-fields, on 
farms and plantations, in workshops and mills, on the 
water and on the land — everywhere, everywhere — men 
and women are at work. The brain and nerve and 
muscle of the world expend their energy, day after 
day, in tidal sweeps through every artery of industry ; 
and thus the world's great heart throbs and throbs ; 
and thus it will throb until its strings shall shiver in 
dissolution. 

This is a working world — a serious, earnest, hard 
working world ; yet it is not all, or not always, so. 
Rising out of this daily vision of work, and harmo- 
niously blending with it, like variations sporting with, 
and above, a musical theme, there are other scenes that 
attract attention. A steamer pushes out into the bay, 
with music swelling and streamers flying over a happy 
company of men, women, and children, upon an excur- 
sion of pleasure. Under the shadow of a grove the 
groups of a picnic romp and run, and laugh and chat, 
through the long summer afternoon. In public halls 



84 Work and Play. 

and private parlors feet move to the sound of the viol 
through the merry evenings, till they cross the bars of 
midnight. Children frolic upon the lawn, and boys 
play at football or cricket upon the common. All over 
the country, where the snow falls, old and young are 
sleighing and skating and sliding under the moon ; and 
wherever the surf rolls in upon a pleasant beach, or 
crystal waters mirror lordly mountains, or the earth 
bubbles with its mineral treasures, a nation of languid 
travellers gather during the heat of summer, for relax- 
ation and enjoyment. 

So this world is a world of work, not only, but a 
world of play. Surely something of present interest 
and permanent, practical value may be said of things 
which absorb more than half of the time, and all the 
energy, of the civilized world ; and I propose to devote 
the hour to the discussion of Work and Play, and the 
illustration of their meaning and their mission. 

I have not selected this subject because there is 
much that is brilliant or amusing to be said upon it, 
but because there is no man, not too indolent to attend 
a lecture, who does not possess a practical, every-day 
interest in it. I have selected it, too, because I believe 
that the popular notions with relation to it are in 
many respects erroneous, and in some respects unheal- 
thy and even dangerous. My aim will be : 



Work and Play. 85 

First, To reveal the relations of work and play tc 
the development of the worker ; 

Second, The relations of work and play to each 
other, in securing this development ; 

Third, Their relations to the health and happiness 
of the race ; and, 

Fourth, To suggest something of their ultimate re- 
sults. 

The first thing to be done is to define our terms. 
What is work, and what is play ? 

Work is the exercise of the mind, or the body, or 
both, under the command and control of the will, for 
the attainment of an object of fancied or real utility. 

Play is the exercise of the mind, or of the mind and 
body, at the instance of impulses originating in the 
conditions and dispositions of the system, and expend- 
ing themselves without an object, beyond momentary 
satisfaction. Work contemplates achievement and 
acquisition, and has its end outside of, and beyond, 
itself, so far as relates to the worker's intent. Play, 
self-moved, seeks for nothing further than present 
gratification, and has its end in itself. Will is the 
master of work. It fixes its goal, and then harnesses 
and drives all the human faculties toward it, or to it. 
Play removes their harnesses, hangs up the whip, and 
releases them to the impulses which move them tc 
ehow the iron upon their heels, to roll in the sand, 01 



86 Work and Play. 

to frisk upon the sward. Work, under will, is deter- 
mined, persistent, and steady ; play, under impulse, is 
volatile, and delights in change. 

Now let us go directly to nature for our first lesson 
in the meaning and mission of work and play. The 
boy is born into the world a delicate organism — a soft 
bundle of brains and nerves, and bones and muscles, 
and vessels and limbs, without will, and without the 
power of self-support and self-direction. The first 
months of his life are passed in a kind of unconscious 
consciousness, and nothing higher is expected of him 
than that he pull the whiskers of his father, and smile 
appre daringly when his mother talks nonsense to him. 
Soon he begins to grasp, or to reach after, the things 
he sees — a pearl-button, a coffee-pot, a chandelier, or a 
church-steeple ; and we feel that great progress has 
been made when he can shake his rattle-box three 
times and repeat, even if the performance be slightly 
spasmodic and irregular. The months pass away, and 
he stands upon his feet ; and after a brief and delight- 
ful tutelage, he waddles about wherever his impulses 
lead him. He takes trips of ten feet upon his father's 
cane, which not unfrequently proves refractory and 
throws him. He frolics with the kittens, or hugs 
them to death. He builds block-houses, and knocks 
them down. He excavates convenient sand-banks. 
He delights, above all things, in the open air, and 



— I 



"^r 

Work and Piay. 8* 

runs because he loves to run ; but whether within 
doors or without, he is always in mischief. From 
morning to night his little muscles are in motion ; and 
when compelled, at last, to go to bed, he relinquishes 
his play with tears. Year by year, as he grows up 
through boyhood, the range of his play is widened. 
He drives other boys four-in-hand, cr plays at ball, or 
slides down hill, or runs races, or wrestles, or goes 
hunting and fishing. 

Now, what makes this boy play ? And what does 
this play do for him ? 

He plays because he cannot help it — because in the 
centra], motive forces of his nature God has written 
the command to play. He has no end beyond the 
gratification of his momentary and shifting impulses. 
He plays because the life within him exults in action, 
and delights in expenditure. Tired in one direction of 
amusing or pleasant effort, he turns toward another ; 
and thus, one by one, or group by group, he calls into 
activity all the faculties of his mind and all the func- 
tions of his body. He has no object, I repeat, in this 
constant action and constant change ; .but God has. 
This play is for the symmetrical development of the 
boy, of all the powers of which he is the possessor ; and 
no boy without play was ever well-developed, or ever 
can be. A boy who does not play, and does not love 
to play, is not a healthy boy, mentally, morally, or phy« 



88 Work and Play. 

sically, no matter how many precious hymns he can 
repeat, nor how well he can say his catechism. Play 
is the Creator's ordained means for the development 
of the child. I am aware that it drives weak-headed 
mothers crazy, and aggravates the aggregate of the 
shoe-bill, and makes terrific work with trousers ; but 
it makes men, and, as a general rule, the boy that 
plays the best, makes the best man. 

There is a sad amount of fighting against Heaven in 
the attempts made by irritable and impatient parents 
to repress the playful manifestations of their children. 
Carefully and reverently I declare that God impels, 
nay, compels, the child to play, and that those who 
strive to crush the spirit of play in children for the 
security of their own ease and comfort, or from mis- 
taken notions of the nature and the mission of play, 
oppose Him as really as when they set themselves 
against any movement or policy in His moral universe. 

Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for 
developing in the child a harmonious and healthy 
organism, and preparing that organism for the com- 
mencement of the work of life. I insist upon this, at 
this point, for I shall call it up again in the course of 
this discussion ; I insist that play is not only an inno- 
cent thing in itself, but that it is an essential portion 
of the divinely appointed means for the development 
of the race into its highest earthly estate. 



Work and Play. 



89 



In order that our lesson may Dot be complicated, 
we will leave the period of study out of consideration, 
and put our boy to work. Perhaps he has already per 
formed a few tasks about the house, willingly or un- 
willingly, but they have been so light that he has not 
seriously felt them. That the work may be simple, 
we will apprentice him to a trade. This little bundle 
of organs, grown into compactness and power through 
the exercise which play has procured, is placed under 
a task-master. The first day, perhaps the first week, is 
passed delightfully, because it has the charm of novel- 
ty ; but, at last, his mind, strained in one direction, 
and his muscles, exercised in a single style of action, 
become weary. At this point begins the discipline of 
work — the bringing of all his faculties under the con- 
trol of his will. He -flinches from his task, perhaps, 
but his will spurs him on. He looks from his window, 
and sees other boys engaged in play, and longs to be 
among them ; but his will vetoes his impulses, and 
keeps him to his work. 

Thus these organs that have been developed by 
play, and this life that will manifest itself in action, 
bend themselves, under the command of will, to the 
accomplishment of useful results. Directed by intel- 
ligence, and starting from rationally apprehended mo- 
tives, they take their way along the channels of the 
world's industry. 



90 Work and Play. 

Here dawns upon us the mission of work. God, 
by implanting in the boy the impulse to play, has 
taken care of his development up to this point. As 
a boy, he is complete ; but manhood demands some- 
thing further, and he must be trained to self-impulsion, 
self-direction, and self-control. The organs which play 
has prepared, work puts to use. Over these young 
faculties the will is placed in office, and is, itself, 
developed by the exercise of its functions. The mis- 
sion of work is never fully accomplished until the will 
has attained supreme control of all the mental and 
bodily faculties, and those faculties have become obe- 
dient and efficient instruments of the will. Patience, 
persistence, and power to do, are only acquired by 
work. 

But we are leaving our boy. If we watch him at 
the close of his daily task, we shall find him very 
weary, but very ready to play. He has been working 
in a single direction. A single group of faculties and 
a single set of muscles have been employed during the 
day, and before he sleeps, Nature impels him to bring 
those that have been unemployed into harmony with 
them. The strain must be released, and the worked 
and the unworked boy must be reconciled to each 
other by play, before both can sleep well. So, 
through the evening the boy is as active as the live- 
liest, and as boisterous as the noisiest ; and at bed-time, 



Work and Play. 



91 



if he be not rested, he is ready to rest, and to rest 
well. He sleeps better at night, and he works better 
the next day, for this play ; and thus, play comes in 
as the minister and helper of work. The used and the 
unused faculties are harmonized with each other, and 
developed together. If the impulse to play between 
the periods of labor be suppressed, and nothing of the 
boy be developed save the faculties engaged in his 
special work, he will become not only the slave of 
work, but he will be transformed into its creature. 
Woe to him if he fail to yield to the impulses to play 
which start up among his unused faculties, until those 
faculties dwindle beyond the power to give birth to 
an impulse ! 

This simple illustration has introduced us to the 
primary and principal offices of work and play. In 
this illustration they reveal themselves as coordinately 
essential in that economy which contemplates the high- 
est human development. The development which God 
seeks for is the growth and perfection of the power to 
do. Play does what it can for this object, and work, 
in widely-varied forms of ministry, does the rest. 

Our illustration has not only revealed the primary 
relations of work and play to human development, but 
it has suggested something of their relations to each 
other, and thus brought us to the second point under 
discussion. I begin with the proposition that work 



92 Work and Play. 

was made for man, and not man for work. Work is 
man's servant, both in its results to the worker and 
the world. Man is not work's servant, save as an 
almost universal perversion has made him such. We 
need not go beyond the circle of our immediate ac- 
quaintances for instances of this perversion. Every 
variety of work has stamped itself and left its stamp 
upon society. Almost everywhere men have become 
the particular things which their particular work has 
made them. In the place of a broad, strong, sym- 
metrical manhood, we have a weak, crippled, and dis- 
torted manhood. We know a thoroughly-worked old 
lawyer as readily as we do an old fox. We can recog- 
nize a Wall-street financier at thirty paces, and can tell 
a clergyman as far as we can see him. There are very 
much greater differences between a Yankee farmer and 
a Yankee sailor than in the length of their trousers. 
There are round shoulders, and pulpy muscles, and 
halting limbs, and all varieties of bodily and mental 
eccentricities, resulting from the slavish pursuit of the 
different callings. The negroes on the cotton planta- 
tions of the South, who carry water to the field upon 
their heads, become bald upon the spot where u the 
hair ought to grow " by the weight and friction of the 
jugs, but they are no more distinctly stamped by their 
work, and are, in fact, not half so bald, as multitudes 
of whites who bear heavier burdens of a different kind. 



Work and Play. 93 

Thus have men become the creatures of their work, 
and thus has work become to them, in many respects, 
a curse. When work enslaves a group of faculties, 
and employs and develops that group to the neglect or 
the death of all others, then does it surpass aud abuse 
its office. This it is that makes one-sided men, partial 
men, fractional men. This it is that puts the menial 
stamp upon men, that brands them with the name of 
their tyrant-master. This it is which spoils manhood, 
and debases its subjects to the level of their calling. 
This it is which too often transforms men into lawyers 
and financiers and ministers and merchants and farmers 
and hod-carriers — beings who can do one thing, and 
nothing else — who are competent in one direction, and 
babies or fools in every other direction. I say again, 
that man was not made for work, but work for him, 
and that its office is abused in the degree by which it 
hinders the symmetrical development of all his facul- 
ties. One of the direct roads to brutality lies through 
unalieviated and undiversified bodily labor. Let a man 
be worked and fed as a brute is worked and fed, and 
he will become brutal. A man using only the facul- 
ties demanded by his calling will develop only those 
faculties. So it is evident that something besides 
work is necessary ' for healthful development, after 
the peculiar period of play is passed. 

If, now, we turn to play as the exclusive agent 



94 Work and Play. 

in the development of the adult, we shall find it still 
more inadequate than work, because in play there is 
no purpose and no training of power under will. Up tc 
a certain period of life play is everything that is neces- 
sary. Wherever it is suppressed, and the young mind, 
or the young body, or both, are put into the harness 
of work, disease or disaster is the result. I know not 
which to pity most — the infants crowded into a prema- 
ture development of brain and mind, or the pale faced 
dwarfs among the factory-boys. Whenever I see a pale, 
old face on a young body, I know that somebody's wil- 
ful ignorance, or somebody's cupidity, needs forgiveness. 
Up to a certain point of development, I say, play 
only is necessary. Beyond that point work must come 
in with its discipline, or play will degenerate into dissi- 
pation. There are few more pitiable objects than men 
and women who have never had anything to do but to 
amuse themselves. They are pitiable because useless, 
powerless, and unhappy. The whole horde of dandies 
and devotees of fashion — men and women who have 
no higher employment than ministry to vanity and 
appetite and passion — are blanks, or blotches, on one 
of the most beautiful and beneficent schemes of the 
Creator, and objects of disgust to every healthy soul. 
As much as many working men desire ease, I have 
never seen one who did not in his inmost soul despise 
on idle man, or one who could do nothing. 



Work and Play. 95 

Play, I repeat, leaves entirely out of consideration 
one of the principal offices of work, viz., the training 
of the will. It is all-important that the intense vitality 
that comes in with manhood and womanhood be under 
control, and be directed into legitimate channels of ex- 
penditure. As childhood is left behind, new passions 
take possession of the individual ; and if he be left to 
the sway of impulse, he will be almost certain to gravi- 
tate toward sensuality. There is abundant life to be 
expended somewhere — if not in work, then in some- 
thing else. Impulse will be sure of the mastery if the 
will be weak and vacillating. Appetite is clamorous, 
and passion is imperious, and an undeveloped and un- 
trained will, will bend readily under the stress of 
these motives. It is notorious that, almost without 
exception, those young men who are never put to 
work, especially if they have strong vitality in them, 
sink into vice. The reason is, that exclusive play, after 
the period of childhood, naturally degenerates into dis- 
sipation. The will bends before the strongest impulse, 
or lends it its aid ; and the strongest impulse is born 
of the strongest passion that happens to be in exercise. 

Not unfrequently we have striking instances of this 
dissipation and degradation, and the corrective influ- 
ence of work when resorted to for the first time in 
adult life. We all of us know young men who have 
led a life of gayety and vice upon the paternal wealth, 



96 Work and Play. 

and we have seen them become the terror and disgrace 
of a neighborhood, the bane and burden of a home, 
— given up, as hopelessly debauched, by their best 
friends. Yet, when some great disaster has whelmed 
the wealth upon which they have lived, and a great 
motive of action has presented itself to them, we have 
seen them sobered in a day, and, under the disci- 
pline of labor, become men of character and of power. 
Among men, these cases may be rare ; but among 
women, cases not dissimilar are abundant. With 
them, play is more a dissipating and less a debasing 
habit, and reformation is consequently easier. How 
many gay girls have we seen — butterflies, giddy, 
thoughtless, undisciplined creatures — becoming sober, 
noble, and devoted wives and mothers, when marriage 
and maternity have put the discipline of work upon 
them. How, under the motive of a great love, has 
their work often taken on the character of a great 
heroism ! 

So, neither work nor play is sufficient of itself ; and 
now, before I come to the practical discussion of the 
relations of play to labor in adult life, I recall the ques- 
tion of the essential nature of play. I propose that it 
has as legitimate functions in the life of the man and 
the woman as in that of the child, and that, in the dis- 
charge of those functions, it is in no sense ninful, 
thriftless, or undignified. The religious asceticism that 



Work and Play. 97 



has placed its ban upon play in its various manifesta- 
tions, the hard economy that denounces it as wasteful 
of time and money, and the stolid dignity that re- 
gards it with contempt, are essentially moral nuisan- 
ces. Play may not have so high a place in the divine 
economy, but it has as legitimate a place, as prayer. 
Its direct importance, when we contemplate useful 
results, is not so great as that of work ; but it is 
essential to the healthful development of the worker, 
and essential in keeping the machinery of work in 
order. It is the great harmonizer of the human facul- 
ties, overstrained and made inharmonious by labor. It 
is the agency that keeps alive, and in healthy activity, 
the faculties and sympathies which work fails to use, 
or helps to repress. It is the conservator of moral, 
mental, and physical health. 

I have never seen a man who, through a long life 
of labor, has been playful, giving himself up in the 
hours of his leisure to the lead of his innocent im- 
pulses, who was either bigoted, invalid, or insane. In 
short, play is as innocent and as legitimate in the man 
as in the boy, provided, of course, that it start from 
innocent impulses, and answer its legitimate ends. 

I bring out this point with special prominence, be- 
cause many of the innocent modes of play, like play it- 
self, have been placed under ban by well-meaning people 
who are possessed by the notion that all time spent in 
5 



98 Work and Play. 

play is mis-spent, and that all money devoted to play 
is mis- appropriated ; who believe that the idle words 
and the thriftless deeds of play are those for which 
they are to be brought into judgment. Play is to be 
resorted to intelligently and conscientiously, without 
doubt, and should never descend into dissipation. It 
should always be of that kind and amount which will 
induce the most perfect sleep ; which will the most thor- 
oughly harmonize the functions of the mind and body, 
wearied and distracted by work ; which will best nour- 
ish the faculties that work has neglected ; and which 
will best prepare both body and mind for the pursuit 
of work. This is the mission of play to the worker ; 
and a great blessing would it be to the world could it 
be intelligently apprehended as such. A great blessing 
would it be, could the almost universal bondage of the 
world to the idea that play compromises Christian con- 
sistency, and worldly thrift, and manly dignity, be for- 
ever broken. A great blessing would it be, could a mis- 
takenly conscientious world look heavenward, and feel 
the full blessedness of the truth that God smiles upon 
His creatures at play as benignantly as when they are at 
work, and that He frowns as indignantly upon that work 
which enslaves and distorts and spoils them, as upon 
that excess of play which dissipates or prostitutes them. 
"We have resorted to Nature for an illustration of 
the effect of play upon the boy : let us go to the same 



Work and Play. 99 

teacher to learn the united effect of work and play 
upon the man. The simpler the illustration, the bet- 
ter. We will take the negroes of a cotton plantation. 
They will sing all day while engaged in their work, 
and dance all night after it, if they can get a chance. 
For every hard task they have a song which helps 
them through. It is in this way that they preserve 
themselves from disease and insanity. If you would 
find invalids and lunatics, go among the Yankees, and 
particularly the Yankee farmers. By this play, these 
negroes become safe property to own. They follow 
their instincts and impulses, unchecked by any con- 
scientious or economical considerations ; and I wish 
that all the poor slaT-es, chained to the oar of labor, 
would follow them as innocently. 

But I can bring my lesson from a nearer point than 
this. I appeal to you to testify if there do not come 
to you, at the close of each day's hearty and healthy 
labor, the desire to play. You go home from your 
work to your dinner or your tea, and when you rise 
from your table, (if you are not smokers,) what is your 
first impulse ? Springs there not in you that which 
tells you there is something w 7 hich should intervene 
between that point and sleep ? You love that wife, 
or those children, or sisters, better than all, of course ; 
but is it your supreme desire to sit quietly down with 
them and spend the evening ? Is it the most delight/ 



100 Work and Play. 

ful thing you can imagine to doze over your evening 
paper for an hour, and retire to bed as early as you 
decently can ? Never, unless work has killed the best 
part of you. Do you not feel that you need something 
besides rest and before it ? Is it not habitual for it to 
occur to you that you have " an a'ppointment," that 
you must go to the post-office, or go somewhere ? Do 
you not long to get into the open air, and to wander 
where you list? I know that I touch the experience 
of every healthy working man present. Now, believe 
me, this is God's voice in your nature bidding you 
play, and you have no right to disregard it. It is 
under this untaught impulse that the slave resorts 
to singing and dancing. It is this impulse, perverted, 
which drives the poor toper to his pot-house and his 
pot-house companions. It is this impulse, under a 
German education and German habits, that takes the 
German to his garden and his lager bier ; but you, 
with higher tastes and better impulses, resort to noth- 
ing at all but a barren walk in a giddy street, and feel 
yourselves obliged to make a business apology for 
that ! " They order these things better in France." 

I therefore make the assertion, that every intelli- 
gent worker — every man and woman whose faculties, 
ander will, are trained and held to the performance 
of a daily task — should always have regular periods 
of play. 



Work and Play. 101 

The practical question now arises as to what this 
play shall be. It should never be that which is essen- 
tially work — that which is felt to be a tax of power, 
under will. If you have read Dickens, you will remem- 
ber the picture of Dr. Blimber's young gentlemen as 
they appeared when " enjoying themselves," walking 
out in dignified and dressy couples, with the Doctor 
at their head, and the boys of the street turning sum- 
mersets in the foreground. There is a great deal of 
this bastard play, in which the young have been forced 
into walks which worried them, and tasks which dis- 
gusted them, as a relief to study or work. Exercise 
which has been the severest mental and bodily discom- 
fort has been mistaken for play. I have seen young 
men working away for dear life at saw-horses, or scud- 
ding over barren miles as if a ghost were after them, 
or swinging dumb-bells, when I knew they were en- 
gaged in harder tasks than those from which they 
sought relief. This "muscle-movement," as it is 
called, in our colleges, will amount to but little if the 
element of play do not enter largely into it. A young 
man, or a young woman, who takes exercise of set pur- 
pose for the preservation of health, may in some in- 
stances succeed ; but the chances are against success, in 
all cases where the exercise alternates with periods of 
severe labor, of any kind. The severest exercise may, 
indeed, be play, but that which is felt to be a task is 



102 Work and Play. 

not play, and can never be made to take the place 
of it. 

The mode of every man's play must be determined 
by the indications of his tastes, conditions, and disposi- 
tions. There are some who enjoy athletic games, and 
are never so much at home as when on the cricket- 
ground, or the bowling-alley, or the row-boat. Play 
of this character has the double power to give mental 
relief, and preserve and develop physical health and 
strength. Every intelligent lover of his country and 
his kind will hail the fresh attention attracted to this 
kind of play with gladness and gratitude. It is time 
that this over-worked nation — this nation of narrow 
shoulders, and flat chests, and weak arms and spindle- 
shanks — possessed more of the characteristics of phys- 
ical manhood. Who wonders that strong-handed and 
strong-minded women assert their rights in the pres- 
ence of such a race of men as this ? Were I such a 
woman, with such a husband as such a woman invaria- 
bly has, if she has any, I would assert mine. Why is 
it that the good men of a city permit the bad men tc 
rule it ? Why is it that the respectable men of a ward 
allow rowdies to keep them from the ballot-box ? Be- 
cause, and only because, they lack pluck and prowess, 
and are physically afraid of them. The cause of public 
decency, nay, the cause of Christianity, demands more 
muscle, and I am glad to see that it is likely to get it. 



Work and Play. 103 

In such times as these, and in such as seem likely to 
come, the church militant would find abundant employ- 
ment for a saintly corps of robust and muscular men. 

There are others who most enjoy society, and who 
find recreation and reward in a genial circle of friends. 
Much is to be done for the play of the nation by a 
more generous development of its social life. Work 
has well-nigh killed out this kind of play. How few 
are the impulses among the every-day, hard workers 
of the world to mingle in society ! We wander from 
our work into lonely moodiness, for, though we may 
have something to receive, we are conscious that we 
have nothing to give, in social intercourse. How many 
are there in my audience who shrink from receiving 
company, and who dread to go into it, because too con- 
stant and too much work has spoiled them for social 
life ? Work has exhausted them ; work has possessed 
them, and they cannot get their thoughts out of it. 
Work has absorbed, drunk up all their vital juices; 
and if they go to a social gathering, they are either 
driven or dragged there. 

It is in a genial social life that the worker comes 
into contact with minds developed in various direc- 
tions. A congregation of sympathies touch him at 
every point, and stimulate his whole nature into de- 
lightful activity. It is in society that knowledge is 
equalized, and experience harmonized, and all those 



104 Work and Play, 



faculties that work has kept from free development, 
and those sympathies that work has cursed, are called 
into demonstration. It is in social life that the adult 
is always to find his best play, and, until work has 
destroyed the disposition to play, it is there that he 
will always seek it. In the mind of the healthy man 
and woman, as in the mind of the healthy boy and girl, 
play and society will be inseparable thoughts and things. 
The moment that work has so far abused a man that 
he loses the impulse to play, that moment his love of 
society is lost. So I advise all those who find them- 
selves averse to going into society, to go until they like 
it, as they will be sure to do, so soon as the mischief 
which work has wrought shall have been remedied. 

Lonely walking, unless among new scenery, cannot 
be play, except in peculiar conditions of the mind. 
Routine walking, in order to be play, should always 
be social walking. It takes two pairs of ears, at least, 
to enjoy the music of a waterfall, and two pairs of 
eyes to weigh the gold of a sunset with just appre- 
ciation. 

To a great multitude, riding is, perhaps, the most 
delightful of out-door play. The man and woman who 
carry heavy burdens love to be carried. This love of 
being carried begins in the mother's arms, and is never 
outgrown. There is something in the passive exercise 
of riding, and even in the society of a horse, if one can 



Work and Play. 105 

get no better, that is eminently refreshing. I nevei 
despair of a man who really loves the society of an in- 
telligent horse. A man who lives as a man should 
live, never outgrows his love of playthings, and he 
should always have them. The little girl plays with 
her doll, the mother with her baby ; the boy plays 
with his rocking-horse, the man with the living ani- 
mal ; and baby and horse are just as really playthings 
as doll and hobby. 

Happy are ye who own horses, and love them and 
know how to use them ; and happy will you all be 
when you get rich enough to own and keep one. In 
the mean time, let your imagination tell you of the 
horse which is to come. His color shall be bay — dark 
and glossy, like the throat of a wild pigeon ; and his 
mane and tail shall be black and flowing. His pace, 
when you wish to be soothed, shall be as gentle as the 
motion of a yacht under easy sail ; and, when you 
wish to be exhilarated, he shall fly like the wind. He 
shall draw you and yours over the smoothly-gravelled 
roads, and learn to know and love his burden. He 
shall whinny for you in his stall, and inform you iu 
his choicest forms of " horse-talk " that all your adini 
ration of him is appreciated. You will speak pet 
phrases in his ear, your children shall caress him, and 
he shall catch their spirit and become playful like them 
and like you. You will tell him that he is very beauti- 
5* 



106 Work and Play. 

ful ; that there is grandeur in the arch of his neck ; that 
there is grace in all his action ; and that it is not a sin 
for a horse to be proud. When, by intimate associa- 
tion with you, he shall become half human, you will 
make known to him the beautiful truth, that when you 
were young God gave you ready and active limbs to 
play with, but now, when work has tired them, He 
has given you a horse. 

Every man, I say again, must determine what his 
play shall be. I say, must determine, because he only 
can judge what is play to him — what his taste selects, 
and what his nature calls for — and because there is a 
duty involved in the matter. To every man who has 
the power to spend a portion of his time in play, I say 
that you have no right to spoil yourself by refusing to 
play. You have no right to prostitute all the noble 
faculties of your soul, and the powers of your frame, to 
the offices of work — to become the things, the ma- 
chines, of a calling. What you are to be careful about 
is, that your play be that which best relieves your la- 
bor, and best prepares you for it; that it do not degen- 
erate into dissipation, nor tend in vicious directions ; 
that, for the time, it drive work from your mind, and 
be recognized as one of its most grateful rewards. 

There can be no radical reform in this matter until 
the popular mind shall more fully comprehend the in- 
trinsic nature of work and its relations to life. The 



Work and Play. 107 

popular mind is enslaved, and needs emancipation. It 
is enslaved to the idea that life is work and that work 
is life ; whereas work is but an instrument of life, to be 
held at arm's-length, and used in such a way that there 
shall be no damaging reaction. During the hours of 
labor, the mind should bend to its faithful perform- 
ance ; but as soon as they are passed, it should rise 
out of work into a free and noble life. The Italian 
beggar, after obtaining enough for a dinner, contents 
himself, and gives himself up for the remainder of the 
day to music and maccaroni. This, you say, is very 
stupid, and I think it is ; but he is more sensible than 
the Broadway merchant or the Wall-street broker 
whose whole soul is absorbed by work — who is in it all 
day, and who dreams of it all night. We need emanci- 
pation, if for nothing else than for the sake of a decent 
family-life. The slave of work becomes an inharmo- 
nious element in his own home-circle. It is pitiful to 
see the thousands scattered all over this country, who, 
through insane devotion to business, have ceased to be 
husbands and fathers ; who have no part in the family- 
life but to furnish funds for its maintenance ; and 
who are only treated respectfully by wives and chil- 
dren because they are crabbed and sour, or because 
they carry the key of the family treasury. 

We need emancipation, and the tendency to it is 
happily evident. It is evident in the more general cir- 



108 Work and Play. 

« 

culation and entertainment of sound and rational ideas -. 
evident in the growing love of literature and art ; evi- 
dent in the increasing attention directed to physical 
culture and games and sports. These facts relate pecu- 
liarly, perhaps, to the literary and mercantile classes ; 
but there is abundant evidence of approaching emanci- 
pation to the tiller of the soil, the artisan, and the 
operative. The effect of labor-saving machinery must 
ultimately be to reduce the hours of labor, as it has 
already mitigated its severity. The work of a day will 
be crowded into a smaller space ; and so soon as our 
people can learn that gold is not the highest good, and 
that man is something better than a beast of burden, 
we shall throw off the shackles which now make our 
callings our masters, and which reduce our life to one 
long, unmitigated bondage to work. 

I now pass to the relations of work and play to the 
health and happiness of the race. Use is the condition 
of health in all the human faculties and functions. We 
have seen that it is the condition of development ; and 
health is naturally implied in the same condition. 
When a plant grows strongly and thriftily, it is in 
its healthiest state : so, when the faculties of the 
mind and the powers of the body thrive the best, 
are they naturally the healthiest. Happiness depends 
also upon the same condition ; for a complete human 
organism, in p bcess of full, healthy development 



Work and Play. 10s 

must be happy, or, in other words, consciously har- 
monious. Work and play, then, do not stop at devel 
opment as their direct result to the individual, but 
they make him healthy, and they make him happy so 
far as happiness depends upon the harmonious move- 
ments of his complicated nature. Utter idleness is but 
another name for utter misery. As a symmetrical de- 
velopment depends upon the use, in work and play, of 
all the human faculties, so also do health and happiness. 
I do not believe the world can furnish a man who has 
for any length of time been entirely absorbed in the 
duties of a calling, and is, at the same time, healthy and 
happy. It is impossible in the nature of things that he 
should be so. 

Here we arrive at a point of importance. Neither 
development, nor health, nor happiness can be secured, 
in their full degree, unless the mind be animated by a 
purpose to secure an object in which it is interested. 
There must be a glad consent of the mind to the 
efforts of its life, or use will be nothing better than 
slavery. Childhood may do without a grand purpose, 
but manhood cannot. For the accomplishment of this 
purpose, work is the instrument ; to its accomplish- 
ment, play is only indirectly, though essentially, tribu- 
tary. There must be a tendency of the life, starting 
from an intelligently apprehended purpose, to certain 
snds or certain results, before everything in a man— 



110 Work and Play. 

before all things in a man — can move harmoniously. 
Now the mind of no healthy and sound man can gladly 
consent to a life of slavery to a calling. It revolts 
from such a life ; and play comes in here, not only as 
an agent in development, but as a mental relief and a 
mental reward. If a few hours of work purchase and 
secure a few hours of play, then is the work sweetened 
as an exercise, and rewarded as a finished performance. 
In this philosophy we shall find at least one of the 
causes of the discontent and the not unfrequent disas- 
ter that attend retirement from business. ]STo man 'in 
the possession of his faculties can actually retire from 
business and be happy. The moment a life loses its 
purpose, and seeks for its sole enjoyment in play, and 
the neglect of the use of its powers, that moment it 
loses its happiness. It matters nothing how rich a 
man may be : the moment those purposes of life are 
gone to which the work of his life has been devoted, 
he will become miserable, provided he have any power 
left for the fulfilment of a purpose. Your memory 
will recall many a man who has retired from business 
only to die, or to become a melancholy invalid. So 
long as a man retains his faculties, and his control of 
them, he must remain in harness if he would be happy. 
He must possess and pursue a purpose, or bid farewell 
to the zest of life. Here is where the greedy multitude 
of money-makers make wreck of themselves. They 



Work and Play. Hi 

deny to themselves play while the work of their life is 
in progress, in order to have a few years of play, or 
uninterrupted ease,, at the end of it. When their 
money is made, they find themselves spoiled for play, 
and having accomplished their purposes, life is utterly 
spoiled for them. The truth is that play, for the man 
and woman, was never intended to be a steady dish, 
but the condiment of a steady dish. Play is to be 
taken every day, or never. The moment that the pur- 
poses of life are accomplished, play has lost not only 
its power but its significance ; and a man who has 
really retired from all business is practically dead. 

Independence and self-respect are essential to hap- 
piness, and these are never to be attained together 
without work. It is impossible that a man shall be a 
drone, and go through life without a purpose which 
contemplates worthy results, and, at the same time, 
maintain his self-respect. No idle man, however rich 
he may be, can feel the genuine independence of him 
who earns honestly and manfully his daily bread. 
The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of 
the ordained scheme of things ; and the truest self- 
respect, the noblest independence, and the most genu- 
ine dignity, are not to be found there. The man who 
does his part in life, who pursues a worthy end, and 
who takes care of himself, is the happy man. There 
is a great deal of cant afloat about the dignity of labor, 



112 Work and Play. 

« 

uttered mostly, perhaps, by those who know little 
about it experimentally ; but labor has a dignity which 
attaches to little else that is human. 

To labor rightly and earnestly is to walk in the 
golden track that leads to God. It is to adopt the 
regimen of manhood and womanhood. It is to come 
into sympathy with the great struggle of humanity 
toward perfection. It is to adopt the fellowship of 
all the great and good the world has ever known. 

I suppose that all God's purposes in work and play 
are fulfilled in the completion of the discipline of the 
worker, — and the results of work are doubtless laid 
under tribute for this end ; but man's direct purposes 
culminate in the achievement of ends relating to socie- 
ty, institutions, material necessities, art, literature, and 
the varied objects of human pursuit. 

It is in achievement that work throws off all its 
repulsive features, and assumes the form and functions 
of an angel. Before her, like a dissolving scene, the 
forest fades, with its wild beasts and its wild men, and 
under her hand smiling villages rise among the hills 
and on the plains, and yellow harvests spread the 
fields with gold. The city, with its docks and ware- 
houses, and churches and palaces, springs at her bid- 
ding into being. The trackless ocean mirrors her 
tireless pinions as she ransacks the climes for the food 
of commerce, or flames with the torches of her steam 



Work and Play. n; 



sped messengers. She binds states and marts and capi- 
tals together with bars of iron, that thunder with the 
ceaseless rush of life .and trade. She pictures all scenes 
of beauty on canvas, and carves all forms of excellence 
iia marble. Into huge libraries she pours the wealth of 
countless precious lives. She erects beautiful and con. 
venient homes for men and women to dwell in, and 
weaves the fibres which nature prepares into fabrics 
for their covering and comfort. She rears great civili- 
zations that run like mountain-ranges through the level 
centuries, their summits sleeping among the clouds, or 
still flaming with the fire that fills them, or looming 
grandly in the purple haze of history. Nature fur- 
nishes material, and work fashions it. By the hand of 
art, work selects, and moulds, and modifies, and re-com- 
bines that which it finds, and gives utterance and being 
to those compositions of matter and of thought which 
build for man a new world, with special adaptation to 
his desires, tastes, and necessities. Man's record upon 
this wild world is the record of work, and of work 
alone. 

Work explores the secrets of the universe, and 
brings back those contributions which make up the 
sum of human knowledge. It counts the ribs of the 
mountains, and feels the pulses of the sea, and traces 
Jie foot-paths of the stars, and calls the animals of the 
forest and the birds of the air and the flowers of the 



11*4 Work and Play. 

field by name. It summons horses of fire and chariots 
of lire from heaven, and makes them the bearers of its 
thought. It plunders the tombs of dead nationalities, 
and weaves living histories from the shreds it finds. 
It seeks out and sets in order the secrets of the soil, 
and divides to every plant its food. It builds and 
binds into unity great philosophies, along which run 
the life and thought of ages. It embalms the life of 
nations in literatures, in whose crypts are scattered 
seeds of thought that only need the light to spread 
into harvests of bread for living generations. 

How wonderful a being is man, when viewed in the 
light of his achievements ! It is in the record of these 
that we find the evidence of his power and the creden- 
tials of his glory. Into the results of work each gene- 
ration pours its life ; and as these results grow in excel- 
lence, with broader forms and richer tints and nobler 
meanings, they become the indexes of the world's prog- 
ress. We estimate the life of a generation by what 
it does ; aud the results of its work stand out in ad- 
vance of its successor, to show it what it can do, and 
to show it what it must do, to reach a finer consum- 
mation. Thus the results of work become the most 
powerful stimulus of the worker. They inspire emula- 
tion ; they instruct in mode and style ; they feed peren- 
nially the springs of ambition. 

Great, however, as these achievements are, they 



Work and Play. 115 

derive their peculiar significance from the fact that 
they are necessarily and forever less than their author. 
Work being the ordained means of development to the 
worker, must always, by an immutable law, leave him 
higher than his achievement. Never was a worthy 
work accomplished, above which the worker did not 
stand with the feeling that by his work he had been 
fitted for something higher. Every generation that 
has stepped from its sphere of labor into the shadowy 
beyond, has walked forth with the results of its work 
beneath its feet. He who hath builded the house hath 
more honor than the house. Thus work, in its results, 
lifts each generation in the world's progress from step 
to step, shortening the ladder upon which the angels 
ascend and descend, and climbing by ever brighter and 
broader gradations toward the ultimate perfection. 
A new and more glorious gift of power compensates 
for each worthy expenditure, so that it is by work 
that man carves his way to that measure of power 
which will fit him for his destiny, and leave him near- 
est God. 

Among the results of work, we shall find for play, 
too, a compensating ministry. Work wins the appe- 
tite for play, and provides the multiplied means for it. 
It buys and mans a yacht for play. It purchases a 
horse for play, and drives him before its door, and 
gives it the ribbons. It opens houses to the incoming 



116 Work and Play. 

of friends, and carpets floors for them, and fills their 
ears with music and their mouths with delicacies. 
Play plays for work, and work works for play. Play 
assists work by ministering to its delight, and keeping 
its machinery in order, and work supplies play with 
implements for its grateful service. 

There remains to be presented another thought 
relating to the ultimate results of Work and Play. 
Development and discipline have been seen to be 
their immediate object. What is the object of the 
development and the discipline ? For what purpose 
must you and I play in boyhood, and then work 
through a life-time, bringing all our powers under 
the control of will, bending our whole being to the 
accomplishment of a purpose, till every faculty moves 
harmoniously with every other faculty ? Why is man 
fitted by his work to do something higher than his 
work, and to lie down in the dust at last, capable of 
a greater deed than he has ever performed ? Why is 
it, that, great as the record of man upon the earth is, 
it must be forever unworthy of man, and convey but a 
hint of his power? 

I am not a preacher, nor is this an occasion for 
preaching ; but this is a Christian congregation, which 
claims from me the noblest view of this subject — the 
key to its whole meaning. You and I believe that 
man is immortal, and your knowledge of yourselves 



Work and Play. in 



will readily bring you to the admission that an immor« 
tality of rest must be, beyond all conception, horrible 
— more repulsive, in fact, than an immortality of work. 
The mind that ceases to act without an object, must 
forever feed upon itself. If I am taught anything by 
the intimate association and the mutual relations of 
work and play in this sphere of being, it is, that a 
period will arrive when they will be blended in one ; 
when out of rectified conditions, and purified disposi- 
tions, and rationally apprehended schemes and objects 
of good, impulses will rise to spur the will and all the 
faculties trained under it into an eternal play that will 
be essential work, and an eternal work that will be 
essential play. 

Thus introduced to the object and the meaning of 
this development and discipline, what wondrous music 
do the din and discord of business become ! How 
magnificent the thought that, running parallel, or 
intertwining, with our own limited purposes, and even 
our careless play, there is a limitless divine purpose 
threading each object and achievement, and passing 
infinitely on into the unseen ! Hammer away ! thou 
sturdy smith, at that bar of iron, for thou art bravely 
forging thy own destiny ! Weave on in glad content, 
industrious worker of the mill, for thou art weaving 
cloth of gold, though thou mark not its lustre ! 
Plough and plant, and rear and reap, ye tillers of the 



118 Work and Play. 

soil, for those brown acres of yours are pregnant with 
nobler fruitage than that which hung in Eden. Let 
Commerce fearlessly send out her ships, for there is 
a haven where they will arrive at last, with freight- 
ed wealth below, and flying streamers above, and jubi- 
lant crews between ! Working well for the minor 
good and the chief good of life, and wisely making 
play tributary to your ends, you shall all win your way 
to the great consummation I have indicated, and find 
in your hands the golden key that will open for you 
the riddle of your history. 



WOEKOTG A3STD SHIEKING. 



THE disposition to shirk seems to be constitutional 
with the human race. The first recorded act of 
the primal pair, after they had eaten the fatal fruit, 
was an attempt to shirk a moral responsibility. The 
man tried to shift the burden of his guilt upon the 
woman, and the woman charged the serpent with being 
her beguiler. From that day to this their descendants 
have shown that sinning and shirking are inseparable 
companions. --k 

There is a prevalent disposition in this country to 
shirk the hardships of useful and productive labor, and 
to shirk personal, social, and political responsibility. 
Very £ew men make a straight path for themselves, 
dodging no duty, avoiding no burden that legitimately 
belongs to them, and cheerfully and manfully assuming 
every responsibility that Providence places in their 
path. I think that we shall find it both interesting 
and profitable to discuss this fault and failing of man- 



120 



Working and Shirking. 



kind, especially as illustrated by American character 
and history, and to say a few words of the remedy 
which Providence prescribes. 

Let me begin with the proposition that all mankind 
are naturally lazy. There are probably some men in 
the world who love to work, for work's sake, as there 
are some men in the world who love tobacco and 
pickled olives, having acquired a taste for them ; but, 
generally, men work because they are obliged to, for 
the procurement of the necessaries of life, or because 
they are impelled to by the wish for wealth or some 
other desirable good. I do not suppose that any con- 
siderable amount of stone-fence was ever laid " for the 
fun of it," or that the boy lives who prefers raking 
after a cart to flying a kite. Labor is embraced by 
the majority of men as a lesser evil than that from 
which it purchases exemption. 

Now what is labor ? It is the price we pay for 
everything that is not free and common to men. For 
air, we pay no price. It is with us and about us every- 
where. For the water that bathes our faces and slakes 
our thirst, we have only to go where it is — and it is 
everywhere — to find it bursting from the ground in 
perennial springs, or leaping down cataracts, or mur- 
muring to itself in brooks, or spreading itself out into 
rivers, lakes, and oceans. Nay, it will come to us from 
the sky, and we can catch it in our hands, if we will. 



Working and Shirking. 121 

It is possible that some special disposition of air and 
water may cost labor, but both are intended to be 
without price; and they are made free because they 
are so immediately essential to the preservation of life. 
It will be found also that those articles of food which 
are absolutely essential are cheap. A few nuts, to be 
had for the gathering; a few roots, to be obtained for 
the digging ; a few sheep and goats that will take care 
of themselves, and yield milk and meat and peltry — 
these cost but little labor ; but the moment we pass 
beyond the simplest essentials for the preservation of 
animal life, we must pay the full price in labor for 
every article we obtain. 

I say we must pay : somebody must pay. A bushel 
of wheat represents a certain amount of labor — the 
preparation of soil for the seed, the sowing, the cover- 
ing, the reaping, gathering, threshing, winnowing, and 
transportation. A barrel of flour represents a still 
greater amount of labor, both in its quantity and con- 
dition. Every bushel of wheat and every barrel of 
flour represents certain processes of labor without which 
it could never have been produced. So, every ton of 
iron cost somebody a certain price in labor, and an 
ounce of gold, if it will pay for the ton of iron, cost 
somebody just as much labor as the ton of iron cost. 

All values are based on labor — the labor they origi- 
nally cost, or the labor it would cost to duplicate or 
6 



122 



Working and Shirking. 



reproduce them. A necklace of diamonds will sell for 
ten thousand dollars because it would, roughly and gen- 
erally speaking, cost ten thousand dollars to duplicate 
the gems and their setting, drawing them from the origi- 
nal stock of nature. There are exceptions to this rule 
in the lucky stumbles that are made upon extraordi- 
nary deposits of the precious stones and metals ; but, 
speaking in the large way, everything costs its value 
in labor. California makes no more money in digging 
gold than Illinois makes in growing wheat; Georgia 
gets no richer in producing cotton than Massachusetts 
does in spinning it. Nature is so nicely adjusted to this 
basis of values, that intelligent labor thrives as well on 
a mountain as in a valley ; thrives as well on the water 
as on the land ; gets just as much for its pains in a 
quarry of granite as in a vein of gold-bearing quartz ; 
and finds equal profit in working a coal-mine and wash- 
ing for diamonds. 

I look over my audience, and I see silks from China, 
ribbons from France, cloths from England and Ger- 
many, brooches from California, gloves from the feet 
of the Alps — the work of thousands of weavers and 
spinners and dyers and cunning artisans and artists — 
and all these represent labor. All these cost the labor 
of somebody, and the money that bought them cost 
the labor of somebody. The money which you gave 
for these things may not have cost you anything, but 



Working and Shirking. 123 

it cost somebody its value in labor. There are some 
of you, possibly, who have never been obliged to labor, 
and who have earned nothing that you possess ; but 
somebody has earned it. That wealth of yours was dug 
out of the ground, or drawn from the sea, by some- 
body ; perhaps it required ten thousand somebodies to 
do it. You or your ancestors may have won this wealth 
at comparatively little cost ; but it all came originally 
from the marrow and through the muscles of labor. 

The facS that some persons are rich proves that the 
labor of the world is more than sufficient for the wants 
of the world. That everybody lives, and that some 
have wealth who produce nothing, shows that there 
are various ways of securing the results of productive 
labor without engaging in that labor. There is a large 
number of men and women in the world who live upon 
the labor of others — a large number besides those who 
are naturally or necessarily dependent. Many secure a 
share of this surplus of production by entirely legiti- 
mate means. They take a just contribution from it as 
it passes through their hands in various commercial 
exchanges. They fill some office or perform some ser- 
vice for the producers, and secure a proper payment 
for their work ; but the great strife, of the world is 
to see how much of this labor of production can be 
shirked, and how great an amount of its results can be 
secured without paying their legitimate price. Every 



124 Working and Shirking. 

employment that gives heavy pay for light work, every 
scheme of gain that promises large rewards for little 
labor, every profession, trade, or calling, that secures 
the results of productive toil without paying their full 
price, is filled to overflowing, in every community. 

The great centres of commercial exchange are 
points of attraction for the shirks of the world. They 
stand wherever the producers and consumers meet, 
ready to grasp some portion of the profits of trade — 
men who live by their wits — men who minister to the 
vices of wealth for a consideration — men who are con- 
tent to be the well-dressed slaves of capital — men who 
speculate in the necessaries of life, though thousands 
starve — men who gamble in stocks and invent fancy 
schemes of plunder — knaves who eat the flesh and 
drink the blood of needle- women — Peter Funks, beg- 
gars, thieves — men who prefer to simper and smirk 
behind a counter to doing a man's work behind a 
plough — women who sell their bodies and their souls 
for luxury and ease — suckers and swindlers and super- 
numeraries and sinners generally. 

Nor are these all the shirks of the city. If we 
could know the real motive that brings the reputable 
people of a city together, we should, very generally, 
find it to be the desire to win wealth without pro- 
ducing it, and without paying in labor the full price 
for it. The able-bodied farmer's boy leaves the hoe 



Working and Shirking. . 125 

for the yard-stick to save his back from labor ; and 
there are hundreds of thousands of men in our larger 
cities who have relinquished manly employment, manly 
aims and ambitions, and manly independence, for the 
sole purpose of securing the results of the labor of 
others at a cheap rate. I do not say that they accom- 
plish their object, for there is great competition in shirk- 
ing, and pretty hard work is made of it sometimes. I 
am talking simply of their motive and their aim. 

You will not understand me to have any reference 
to the legitimate commerce and the useful profession? 
and callings which engage large and honorable num- 
bers in every city, when I say that the shirks of the 
city are very great curses of the country. They have 
contrived to make labor disreputable, or, at least, 
unfashionable. They have erected a false standard of 
respectability. They have helped to establish the opin- 
iou that the laborer — the producer and the artificer of 
the wealth of the nation — cannot possibly be a gentle- 
man, and that the only gentle pursuits are those of 
trade and commerce, and the professions and callings 
which more immediately serve them. It is in these 
false ideas — offspring of pretentious laziness — that 
American productive labor is educated ; and it is 
sad to think how much of it grows up to despise 
itself, and to look upon its lot as equally severe and 
degrading. The city is the beautiful and haughty 



126 Working and Shirking. 

Estella that tells poor Pip that his hands are coarse, 
and poor Pip gets ashamed of his hands, and feels very 
sadly ah out himself 

But it is not in ideas alone that the shirking classes 
of the city curse the country. Let us look for a mo- 
ment at that paradise of shirks, the stock-exchange — 
a place where not the first particle of wealth ever was 
produced or ever will be produced ; where great games 
of chance are played in a strictly legal and a superlative- 
ly immoral way ; where men combine to break down the 
credit of worthy corporations, conspire to give a ficti- 
tious value to that which is valueless, and make a busi- 
ness of cheating each other and swindling the world. 
I can perceive no difference between a professional 
gambler in stocks and any other professional gambler. 
Both are men who produce nothing ; who play at 
games of skill and hazard for money ; who never win 
a dollar that does not leave some other man poorer ; 
and who strive to over-reach each other, and burn the 
fingers of unsuspicious outsiders. Professional specu- 
lating in stocks is organized and instituted shirking. 
Sin, we are told, " when it is finished bringeth forth 
death." Shirking, in its ultimate development, bring- 
eth forth the stock-exchange. 

Think of the influence of this institution upon the 
country. To leave out of account the temptations it 
holds out to those who are greedy for sudden wealth, 



Working and Shirking. 127 

or to those who are in desperate circumstances, think 
of the false standard of values it sets before the coun- 
try. Think how the trade, the commercial confidence, 
and the business enterprise of the nation rise and fall 
with the varying influence of the bulls and the bears in 
the stock-market, while the real value of the fluctuating 
stocks may not materially change from one year to an- 
other. A panic in the stock-market, produced by pro- 
fessional speculators, is felt from one end of the coun- 
try to the other ; and all this disturbance is caused that 
a set of professional shirks may make an opportunity to 
steal a dollar out of a railway-bond, or filch a dirty 
dime from an honest man's share of bank-stock. 
Would it not be, indeed, a blessing to the country 
if this legal gambling-shop were shut up ? Would 
it not be better, on the whole, that the men who get 
their living there should take to similar pursuits in pri- 
vate, where they use a thicker variety of paper — paste- 
board, in fact — and where they have only four knaves 
in a pack ? I think so. 

Perhaps the most humiliating exhibition which the 
shirks make of themselves is on the occasion of a change 
in the national administration. A hundred dollars in 
money (borrowed), three clean shirts, a long petition, 
an anxious face, and a carpet-bag, form the outfit of 
something less than a hundred thousand able-bodied 
men who make a pilgrimage to Washington every foul 



128 Working and Shirking. 

years. And what do these men want ? They want a 
clerkship, a collectorship, a postmastership — any sort of 
a ship that will save them the trouble of rowing, and 
that will furnish them with pay and rations. The ma- 
jority of these men are shirks, who wish to be released 
from the necessity of productive and useful industry. 
They swarm around the centres of patronage like bees 
around a sugar-cask, every one after something sweet 
which others have collected. Alas ! let me confess 
that the shirks are not all in the city. Rip Van Win- 
kle lived in a country-village under the Catskills, and 
we are told by Mr. Irving that " the great error in 
Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all 
kinds of profitable labor." There is more than one 
Rip Van Winkle in every American village ; but in- 
stead of decently lying clown in the field, and sleeping 
for twenty years, he prefers to take a nap equally long 
in a government-office, and waking up with better 
clothes on, instead of worse. 

The genuine shirk, wherever he lives, has no honor, 
no conscience, and no patriotism. In the nation's hour 
of trial, when everything good in an American's nature 
was appealed to, he clothed our troops with shoddy, 
and cheated them in their rations, and took advantage 
of his country's need to fill his coffers, every dollar of 
which must be patiently worked out by his fellow-citi- 
zens. Certainly a swindling government contractor, in 



Working and Shirking. 12s 

a time of national peril, deserves the most infamous 
place among the shirks and scoundrels of the world. 

Let us look at some of the more obvious and ordi- 
nary results of shirking. All kinds of business that 
promise large results at little cost are overdone. The 
country drives straight into financial wreck at brief, 
irregular periods, simply because there are too many 
men trying to get a living without producing anything. 
If we look over the list of our acquaintances, we shall 
be astonished to see how large a number of disappointed 
men it embraces, and how large a proportion of this 
number is made up of those who tried to win wealth 
cheaply. Generally, disappointed and broken-down 
men are those who have failed in trade, or have run 
through some fancy scheme of gaiu, or, to use an ex- 
pressive Yankee phrase, have " flatted out " in a calling 
or profession which was intended to draw money in 
some way from the producing and commercial inter- 
ests. 

I repeat, that all kinds of business that promise 
large results at little cost are overdone. The haste to 
get rich — the desire to acquire sudden wealth without 
being obliged to pay in labor the legitimate price for it 
— is the principal cause of the financial calamities that 
at brief intervals have befallen our country during the 
last fifty years. It is not that we have not been a 
nation of workers. To get rich rapidly, we have been 
6* 



130 Working and Shirking. 

willing to work intensely and immensely ; but we have 
been shirks all the while — striving to get out of our 
work ten, fifty, or a hundred times more than it has 
been worth. America can never become a truly hap 
py, stable, and reliable nation, until its views of life 
become more sober, and a much larger proportion of 
its people become willing, by patient, manly labor in 
the useful or productive arts of life, to earn every dol- 
lar they receive. 

I ought to add to all this, that much of the failure 
in commercial and professional life is due to a lack of 
preparation for it ; and this neglect of preparation for 
success is a part of the universal system of shirking. 
Lawyers are made in a day. Physicians there are in 
abundance who are as innocent of any knowledge of 
science as they were when they were born. Men enter 
the various avenues of trade without a decent familiar- 
ity with the forms of business, and without any busi- 
ness habits at all. Trades are adopted, not acquired — 
adopted at the suggestion of a natural knack. Indeed, 
I believe that the habit of shirking the work of thor- 
ough preparation for the business of life is well-nigh 
universal in the country. Long periods of training for 
the professions, and patiently pursued apprenticeships 
to the arts and trades, are almost unknown. In short, 
we choose a pursuit which will enable us to shirk labor 
as far as possible, and then shirk the necessary prepara- 



Working and Shirking. 



131 



tion to win success in it. When a boy changes hia 
roundabout for a coat, he is ready to " stick out his 
shingle," as he calls it, and the shingle usually " sticks 
out " a good deal longer than he does. 

It is among men who try to get a living by some 
shift or trick of laziness that we hear the familiar 
words : " the world owes me a living." A loafer w r ho 
never did a useful thing in his life ; who dresses at the 
expense of the tailor, and drinks at the cost of his 
friends, always insists that " the world owes him a liv- 
ing," and declares his intention to secure the debt. I 
should like to know how it is that a man who owes 
the world for every mouthful he ever ate and every 
garment he ever put on, should be so heavy a credit- 
or in account with the world. The loafer lies about 
it. The world owes him nothing but a very rough 
coffin, and a retired and otherwise useless place to put 
it in. 

The world owes a living to those who are not able 
to earn one — to children, to the sick, to the disabled 
and the aged — to all who in the course of nature or by 
force of circumstances are dependent ; and it was main- 
ly for the supply of the wants of these that men were 
endowed with the power to produce more than enough 
for themselves. To a genuine shirk the world owes 
nothing ; and when he tells me with a whine that the 
world owes him a living, I am assured that he has the 



132 Working and Shirking. 

disposition of a highway-robber, and lacks only his 
courage and his enterprise. 

I pass now to the consideration of the disposition to 
shirk special duties of life ; and first, the duty of per- 
sonal self-assertion. We live in a country where, more 
than in any other, public opinion domineers over the 
minds of men. Americans generally dread singularity 
in sentiments and opinions as much as they do in dress ; 
so that if they cannot quite reflect the changing phases 
of the public mind, they modify their moral clothing 
sufficiently to avoid attracting the attention of the boys. 
We dread to appear in the street with a hat or a coat 
live years old ; and we dread just as much to appear in 
an opinion which has gone out of fashion. 

Sacred convictions, deliberately formed opinions, 
long-cherished sentiments, are clipped and rounded 
and shortened in, or pieced out in accordance with the 
popular style, so that we may be enabled to pass for 
men who are up with the times. The men are com- 
paratively few who are willing to take the responsibil- 
ity of the full assertion of their personality ; who will 
stand or fall by their convictions, sentiments, and opin- 
ions ; who will insist on being themselves, even when 
that is equivalent to being singular. This despotic 
public opinion, which, without doubt, has a legitimate 
limited field of influence, shapes our whole national life 
and character, through its influence upon the individual. 



Working and Shirking. 133 

None escape this modifying power, though some fee* 
it and are moulded by it less than others. 

I think you will all be able to call to mind some 
man of your acquaintance who will sufficiently serve to 
illustrate by his life and character this prevalent dispo- 
sition to shirk self-assertion. Perhaps in early life he 
had a few opinions, and conducted his life after a certain 
policy ; but some damaging collision — a little infirmity 
of will — a little too large a love of approbation, and a 
good deal of moral cowardice, have led him to throw 
overboard everything he can call his own ; and he has 
become the victim and sport of the sea of personalities 
around him. He has a great horror of a collision, and 
will hear his most sacred sentiments attacked without 
replying. He shirks all conflict of opinions as he 
would shun a personal street-fight. Whenever he ven- 
tures to push out any manifestation of his personality 
which hits anything, or meets a repulse, he takes it 
back as quickly as he would a burnt finger. He is 
careful to agree with every man who carries a positive 
character ; and it is astonishing to see the variety of 
people he can agree with. He is like arrow-root, or 
certain widely-advertised patent medicines that are 
warranted to " agree with all temperaments and the 
most delicate constitutions." One always knows where 
to find such a man as this ; and so does one's neigt bor. 
In a time of quiet, he will be with you, and with any> 



134 Working and Shirking. 

body who happens to be near him ; but in a time of 
disturbance, when opinions are clashing and a great 
moral conflict is in progress, the fence is his invariable 
resort. He takes to a fence as naturally at every sign 
of tumult and struggle as a squirrel takes to a tree 
when the dogs are out. We have in every community 
a considerable number of men who have spent all their 
years of discretion upon the fence. Such men always 
affect candor and dignity and freedom from prejudice 
and passion, but they are invariably shirks and cowards. 

Such men as these occupy an extreme, it is true ; 
but how large is the multitude who are only less des- 
picable than they ! How many are there who go dodg- 
ing through life, — shunning a collision here for the 
sake of peace, sacrificing a sentiment there rather than 
be guilty of singularity, shirking the assertion of their 
sentiments, convictions, and opinions, when manhood de- 
mands their assertion, allowing themselves to be ham- 
pered and paralyzed in every putting-forth of their per- 
sonality, and clipped and rubbed and rounded and pol- 
ished, until they become as thin and smooth and scents 
less as an old cake of soap in a public bathing-room. 

Going uniformly with one's sect in religion, witn 
one's party in politics, or with one's clique in social 
life, is only less mean than occupying the fence. A 
man who buries his personality in a sect or party be- 
cause he is afraid or ashamed to stand alone, is quite as 



Working and Shirking. 135 

much a coward as he who endeavors to preserve neu- 
trality. A bully with backers is quite likely to be th« 
poltroon of his company, and quite likely to be a bully 
because he is conscious of his cowardice, and wishes to 
prevent other people from finding him out. 

We are every day sacrificing something for peace. 
Well, peace is good, or may be good. Peace is cer- 
tainly desirable. If daily peace with all mankind can 
be purchased by the sacrifice of unimportant things, 
by the surrender of a few personal notions, by a little 
inconvenience that affects only ourselves, very well. 
But peace purchased by running away ; peace pur- 
chased by avoiding conflicts upon questions of vital 
importance ; peace purchased by yielding a point of 
honor, or sacrificing a principle ; peace purchased by 
silent acquiescence in wrong, is not very well. Such 
peace is the most insidious and deadly poison that 
assails American manhood. It is for this peace that a 
certain class has parted with its political opinions. It 
is for this peace that men have practically denied their 
religion. It is for this peace that numbers have failed 
to set themselves against great evils that threaten their 
neighbors, themselves, and their children. It was for 
this peace that American nationality was sold out by 
cowardly politicians and cowardly people. Shirking 
self-assertion and personal responsibility for the sake 
of personal peace — what else was it that led patriotism 



\ 



136 Working and Shirking. 

to retire from year to year before the on-coming flood 
of treason, until even in the capital of the nation there 
was not an ark-load of loyalty left ? Ah ! cursed peace 
—•ah ! fatal peace, that is purchased by the surrender 
of personal manhood ! 

We are every day sacrificing something for popular- 
ity. Well, popularity may be very good, but it is not 
the best good, and it can be purchased at far too high 
a price. Popularity that is secured by meanly with- 
drawing our own opinions to give place to the opinions 
of others, or by refusing to give voice to solemn con- 
victions, or by ignoring a popular vice or giving coun- 
tenance to a popular wrong, is not good. It is the 
basest possession which human meanness can win. A 
man who only asserts so much of that which is in him 
as will find favor with those among whom he has his 
daily life, and who withholds all that will wound 
their vanity and condemn their selfishness and clash 
with their principles and prejudices, has no more man- 
hood in him than there is in a spaniel, and is certainly 
one of the most contemptible shirks the world contains. 

Of course, I would not be understood to advocate 
the idea that every man's personality should so stand 
out that every other man's personality shall run against 
it. I do not advocate the gratuitous obtrusion of one's 
opinions, sentiments, and convictions upon the world, or 
seeking a collision or a conflict wherever one may be pos* 



Working and Shirking. 137 

sible. I simply maintain that for no mean consideration, 
like a cowardly desire for peace or a childish greed for 
praise or popularity, shall a man refrain, on every just 
occasion, from asserting himself and all there is in him. 
I shall speak next of the disposition to shirk the 
duties of social life. I will lead you to my lesson in 
this department of my subject through an illustration. 
In our ISTew England Congregationalism, the parish or 
society is independent in certain very important re- 
spects of the church, and has its own peculiar machinery. 
The parish raises the money, makes the appropriations, 
and does all the business. Now, if you will get inside 
of this organization, and look about you, you will find 
that its responsibility and its work are upon the shoul- 
ders of a very small number of persons, and that by far 
the larger number have no more interest in the affairs 
of the parish than they would have in the management 
of a theatre which they might occasionally visit. The 
majority of those who attend church look upon the 
minister and the deacons and the parish committee as 
a sort of corporation whose business they have no 
interest in and no responsibility for. I have sometimes 
thought that they suspected there was an annual divi- 
dend of the profits of running the machine which those 
who handled the crank monopolized. They hire a pew ; 
and, if they pay for it, they imagine that their duty ends 
there. They are patrons of the institution ; and if thej 



13S Working and Shirking. 

do not like it they hire a pew somewhere else. Some 
of them apparently suppose that they place a parish 
under obligation to them by purchasing the gospel at 
its particular counter. 

The idea that every man who attends a church 
should have just as much interest in it and just as much 
responsibility for it — means, brains, and piety being 
equal— as any other man, they do not apprehend at all. 
The fact that the support and the responsibility of a 
church rest upon all alike, and that the man who is 
willing to enjoy the privileges of a church without 
bearing his proportion of its burdens is a shirk, has 
never come within the range of their conception. 
I suppose this audience is made up of those who do 
their duty in the parishes to which they belong, — and 
those who do not ; and if it should be like audiences 
that I am best acquainted with, the latter outnumber 
the former ten to one. 

In general society we find matters much in the same 
way. Society differs from the parish, however, in that 
it has no formal organization, no instituted machinery, 
no sittings with definite appraisements, and no written 
articles of constitution. Society is, in the looser signi- 
fication of the word, conventional. Men can enjoy at 
least a portion of its privileges — and many do enjoy 
them — without paying anything for them, or without 
paying the full price for them. 



Working and Shirking. 13S 

Society, like the parish, has its burdens ; and these 
burdens are usually borne by a few. We say of one 
man that he is public spirited, and of another that h6 
is not public spirited. We mean that one is willing to 
assume his portion of the duties and burdens of society, 
or of the general public, and that the other is not. If 
some public enterprise is proposed which naturally ap- 
peals to the generosity of men as citizens — lovers of 
the general good — members of society — then we see 
who is ready to bear his proportion of the burdens of 
society, and who is disposed to shirk them. We shall 
find, I am sorry to believe, that the majority of men 
shirk the pecuniary burdens of society, and yet are 
quite willing to share in the results of the sacrifices 
of others. If a park is to be laid out, or a thousand 
shade-trees are to be planted, or a public library 
is to be established, or anything is to be done for the 
general good, which must be done voluntarily, by men 
acting as citizens — as members of society — we shall 
find that a few will contribute generously, and that the 
many will contribute niggardly, and always among 
these many, the miserly rich. The shirking multitude 
are quite willing to believe that what ought to be done 
will be done by somebody, and quite ready to be pen« 
sioners upon the bounty of their betters, with the pi ivi 
lege of abusing them. Most men do what they are 
obliged by law to do, and no more ; and we can 



140 Working and Shirking. 

ascertain how willingly they do even this by inquiring 
of the assessors and collectors of taxes. 

In a restricted sense, " society " is that indefinite 
number of individuals and families with which each 
person is brought into intimate relation. The men 
and women among whom I find myself in social assem- 
blages, who frequent my house, who form the circle 
next to that which embraces my family-life, are my 
" society." This circle will be larger or smaller, better 
or poorer, according to my social value ; and my social 
value will depend upon what I can give and what I do 
give for what I receive. If I give a great deal more 
than I receive, that will make me a social leader, or, in 
time, lift me into community with a higher grade than 
that in which I move. If I give less than I receive — 
though I give all I can — that will make me socially 
subordinate, or translate me to a grade in which the 
social requirements are less. 

We find a very large number of men and women 
who are not willing to remain in the social circle in 
which the circumstances and the natural affinities and 
proprieties of their life have placed them. They have 
an idea that their social value is not determined by 
what they have to give to society, but rather by what 
society gives to them. They believe that if they can 
set their feet within some circle that is nominally above 
them — into that charming sphere which Our Best 



Working and Shirking. 141 



Society calls " our best society " — their brass will 
immediately be transmuted into gold. Let us see 
what our best society, as Oar Best Society calls it, is. 
There are three elements that constitute it, and that 
we may remember them the more readily, they shall 
all begin with a _Z?, viz. : Breeding, Brains, and Bullion. 
These three elements are rarely or never in equipoise^ 
but they mingle in different proportions in different 
places, according to circumstances. In a town where 
there is a considerable number of honorable old fami- 
lies, Breeding usually takes the lead, and gives the law. 
In a town where there is no pretension to hereditary 
respectability, and there is comparatively little wealth, 
Brains will be in the ascendant, and men and women 
of culture and gentle manners will be the leaders. 
When Breeding and Brains are lacking, Bullion will 
give the law to society ; and those who have the repu- 
tation of wealth and the habit of ostentatious display 
will hold the weight of social inlluence. These three 
elements combine, as I have said, in various propor- 
tions, to make what Our Best Society is pleased to 
denominate our best society — that circle to which the 
socially ambitious always aspire. 

Now if there are those before me who stand on the 
outside of this charming and charmed circle, looking 
losgingly into the inclosure, let me put this single 
question to them : " What will you give to go in ? " 



142 Working and Shirking. 

What Our Best Society is pleased to call our best socie- 
ty, is not so unreasonable or so difficult as you may 
suppose. It simply demands that you take notice of 
its dominant ideas, and pay for its privileges :u iho 
current coin. How much old and honorable blood can 
you bring to add to its stock of respectability ? If 
you have good blood, it is not so much matter about 
Brains, provided that your pedigree is so unquestiona- 
ble that Bullion will lend you money. If you have 
plenty of Bullion, and will use it in the entertainment 
of our best society, you can get along quite well with- 
out either Brains or Breeding ; but Breeding, Brains, 
or Bullion you must have, or you cannot go in. Tell 
me : have you a great family-name, or wit or learning, 
and the power to make exhibition of them in conversa- 
tion ? or excellent manners ? or a great house and 
splendid equipage and a hospitable table, with which 
to pay for the privilege of entering this society ? Can 
you, and will you, pay the price of admission in the 
current coin, or do you wish to become one of the pen- 
sioners and bores of this society ? Are you willing 
and ready to pay the price and assume the duties of a 
high social position, or do you wish to enjoy its plea- 
sures and advantages and shirk all its responsibilities ? 
— to be patronized and tolerated as people who give 
nothing for what they receive ? 

I suppose there are multitudes of people, whose 



Working and Shirking. 143 

great desire and anxiety relate to getting into certain 
society for the fancied or real privileges of which they 
have nothing to offer ; who do not dream of being any- 
thing but beneficiaries ; and who look upon good soci- 
ety as a sort of charitable soup-concern for social men- 
dicants, supported by people who have nothing to do, 
and unlimited means to do it with. 

There is a great deal of fault-finding with that 
very nebulous entity which we call society ; but if we 
examine carefully, we shall find that it is uniformly the 
shirks who make most complaint. I never heard a 
man who faithfully and cordially performed all his 
social duties complain of society ; and so society, like 
the parish, is carried on by the few, while the masses 
of men do not regard themselves as having any social 
responsibilities whatever. They are shirks, who are 
willing to receive all that society has to bestow — shirks, 
who fold their hands and whine because society neg- 
lects them — shirks, who never perform a social duty, 
or feel that a particle of social responsibility is upon 
them. 

I shall notice in particular but one more variety of 
shirking of which Americans are peculiarly guilty, and 
this is political shirking — perhaps the most prevalent 
and mischievous of all, because it strikes at the very 
root of the state, and of all individual and social well- 
being. Social shirking does not damage good society 



144 Working and Shirking. 

or injure its quality ; it only makes it smaller. The 
better elements of society combine by natural and con- 
ditional affinities, and the shirks only fall back into com- 
paratively harmless disorganization. Political shirk- 
ing, on the other hand, instead of leaving political 
affairs in good hands, invariably leaves them in bad 
hands ; for it is the more virtuous constituents of polit- 
ical communities, and not the vicious, that shirk their 
political responsibilities. I should rather say, perhaps, 
that bad men seize the opportunity which the negli- 
gence of good men affords them, to manage political 
affairs for their own selfish advantage. 

Under the American system of self-government — at 
whose ballot-box all social and individual distinctions 
are wiped away — it is astonishing to see how many 
there are who do not feel that they have the slightest 
political responsibility. They come out to the elec- 
tions, perhaps, because their party-leaders desire them 
to come out, or because their party-feelings urge them 
to come out, or because they delight in the excitement 
of an election, or, possibly, in some rare and remarka- 
ble instances, because they are paid for coming out. I 
give it as a carefully formed judgment, that not one 
American voter in five really feels that he has any per- 
sonal responsibility in the government of the country. 
All feel, of course, that they have a personal interest in 
it, but this interest is not associated with a sense of 



Working and Shirking. 145 

high personal duty. In times of political excitement 
they may be excited, but their interest is mainly in be- 
half of a party. They may work very enthusiastically, 
indeed, for " our side," without giving a single thought 
to our country. To a certain extent, this is the result 
of ignorance, or of a lack of power to grasp their real 
relations to the state, or of a degree of moral poverty 
which shuts them off from all high, patriotic motives. 

I have yet to learn that the American nation is not 
the equal of any of the nations of the world in the pos- 
session of pure morals and Christian virtues ; but it is 
painfully evident that there is not a nation on the face 
of the earth in which bad men have such facilities for 
acquiring and retaining power as in ours. They win 
elections to seats in the national legislature by frauds 
and briberies ; they go to roost like foul birds in the 
offices of great cities ; they batten on public spoil ; 
they disgrace Christian civilization and free institu- 
tions ; they debase the moral sense of the nation. To 
them, a country or a city is but a great goose to be 
plucked and plucked and plucked again, until, sibilant 
and shrieking, it tears itself from their grasp, to be 
caught immediately by another set of spoilsmen and 
plucked to the very quills and pin-feathers. 

Now, who is responsible for this ? Not the bad 
man, certainly, or not the bad men mainly. It can 
hardly be accounted a crime for a vessel to run a 
7' 



146 



Working and Shirking. 



blockade if she can, and her interests demand the risk ; 
but it is a crime for a blockading fleet to allow her to 
do it. If the devil is permitted to manage the politics 
of a nation we expect him to do it, for politics are in 
his particular line ; and the good men, whose business 
it is to hinder him from doing it, must be held respon- 
sible for the damage that may result from his manage- 
ment. Thus I affirm that the good men of America 
are mainly responsible for everything evil in American 
politics. They have the best social influences in their 
hands ; they have the Christian Church ; they have the 
literary institutions ; they have the pure sympathies of 
women ; they have reason, conscience, truth, and God 
all on their side — nay, they have the majority ; and the 
only reason why bad men reign and they are power- 
less, is that they are shirks. 

Yet these political shirks are very respectable men. 
Let us not allude to them too harshly or too lightly. 
If they are " fossiliferous " and fussy, they are prudent 
and pious. Far be it from me to speak disrespectfully 
of their linen, or to question the whiteness of their fra- 
grant hands. They are exceedingly clean and pure 
men, their particular fault (if they have one) being an 
excessive cleanliness and purity that unfits them for 
having anything to do with politics. They are of that 
unlucky moral hue that shows dirt on the slightest 
provocation, and requires them to be carefully dusted 



Working and Shirking. m 

and set away. They refuse, year after year, to visit 
the polls, because politics have become so corrupt that 
they have ceased to have any interest in them, or 
because good men are not nominated for office ; yet 
they never dream of attending a primary meeting to 
make sure that good men are nominated, or of making 
any attempt to render politics less corrupt. Of all the 
shirks and sneaks which the prolific soil of America 
produces, there certainly can be none more despicable 
than these. America is not suffering from a political 
evil to-day for which the good men of the country 
should not be held mainly responsible. Bad men have 
run the nation upon ruin, because they have been per- 
mitted to do it ; and good men, instead of leading in 
the political battles, have fought humbly in the ranks, 
or run away. Indeed, many of them have come to the 
conclusion that there is something necessarily demoral- 
izing in politics, and that religion and politics are 
entirely incompatible with each other. 

There is another class of good, or goodish men, 
who hold political privilege at a cheap price, and who 
are ready to sell it for personal ease and convenience. 
They are willing to look after politics a little, or to do 
anything for their country, if it does not cost too much 
trouble, or too much money. They are very much 
absorbed by their own affairs, and have no time to 
give to their town, or their state, or their country 



143 Working and Shirking. 

They leave these matters to those who have leisure . 
aud those who have leisure happen to be those who are 
bent on public mischief or private advantage. Bad men 
always have leisure for taking and employing all the 
power which the excessive occupation of good men leaves 
in their hands. While, therefore, one set of men are so 
good as to be disgusted with politics, and another is so 
busy as not to have time for attending to them, the very 
worst elements of society find an easy path to power. 

The time was not long ago when there were few — 
alas ! how few ! — who were willing to sacrifice any- 
thing for their country. The best men have declined 
office and shunned public duty because they could not 
afford to hold office. They could afford to see office 
held by second and third rate men, and to be them- 
selves ruled by vicious men, and to have the institu- 
tions of their country cheapened and disgraced by the 
weak or wicked administration of the laws, but they 
could not afford to part company with a few dollars to 
serve the country and the institutions which their chil- 
dren were to inherit ! What, in Heaven's name, shall 
become of a nation whose good men — whose best men 
— not only refuse to participate in elections, but refuse 
to be elected to office, when chance, or an aroused moral 
sentiment, designates them for responsible positions ? 
Let the unhappy condition of the country, and the his- 
tory of the last twenty years, give answer ! 



Working and Shirking. 149 

I have thus spoken of several varieties of shirking, 
and several classes of shirks. I might mention others, 
but it would be alike tedious and unnecessary. 

And now I am ready to ask what the cure for this 
grand national fault in all its various forms of manifes- 
tation may be. What is the medicine for this mean- 
ness ? What will drive the shirking multitudes that 
throng all the easier trades and professions back to 
hard and honest gains in the useful or productive arts 
of life ? What will harden the bones and strengthen 
the muscles and stiffen the courage of manhood, so 
that it will assert itself as manhood should — at all 
times, in all places — yielding nothing of personal con- 
viction or personal power to a weak desire for peace or 
popularity ? What will make us public-spirited, and 
generous in social life ? What will enlarge our sym- 
pathies and quicken our activities as members of a 
national brotherhood? What thing, more than any 
other, will bring us up to a comprehension of our politi- 
cal duties, and a willingness to perform them ? What 
will teach us that we cannot shirk these duties — that 
there is not an interest of life on which they do not 
have a practical bearing ? What will make us nobler 
and more unselfish men — more willing to do or die for 
that which is god-like in our souls and God-given in 
our institutions ? What will transform all this multi- 
tude of personal, social, and political shi *ks into heroes. 



150 Working and Shirking. 

and evoke from this mass of sneaking laziness and self 
ish indifference those virtues which are a nation's noblest 
wealth ? I answer — A great war for a great cause. 

If the history of America for the last fifty years 
proves anything with striking clearness, it proves that a 
long peace, maintained without sacrifice, and held with- 
out a sense of its value, is the very breeding-bed of cow- 
ardice, cupidity, and corruption. The most heroic blood 
becomes thin, and the stoutest hearts grow weak and 
cowardly, in the luxurious atmosphere of a cheap peace. 
National pride, love of country, patriotic self-devotion 
— these are not the sentiments and the virtues that 
thrive among a people that recedes from all sense of 
national care into the selfish pursuits of gain, or the 
weak indulgences of ease. Peace is very beautiful ; 
peace may be very safe, indeed, for angels ; but for 
men, with the imperfections, temptations, and tenden- 
cies of men, a peace that is not the price of ceaseless 
vigilance, and the cost of a daily sense of sacrifice, may 
be a curse so much worse than war, that war may be 
gladly greeted as a blessing in its stead. It was Lon- 
don, cheaply built and cheaply held, and bent on selfish 
advantage, that was smitten again and again by the 
plague. At length, in one brief visitation, it breathed 
upon and blasted a hundred thousand lives. And then 
came the furious and all-devouring fire, driving the 
sickly multitudes from their homes, and licking up 



Working a^d Shirking. 



151 



and wiping out cheap London forever. Straightway, 
on the ruins of both plague and fire, rose a new city • 
and long generations have blessed the fire that ban- 
ished' the plague forever. The question in America 
has been for many years between plague and fire. 
With a full comprehension of the horrors and sacrifices 
of war — with a heart bleeding with sympathy for every 
soul to which war brings bereavement and sorrow — I 
thank God for the fire, and the dearer and better peace 
it will bring us. 

Fire is a great renovator and gunpowder a remark- 
able disinfectant. Already is the influence of war visi- 
ble for good upon the American people. Men have 
not only discovered that there is something better 
than money, but more than this — and greater discovery 
than this — that there is really something which they 
love better than money. The universal revival of 
patriotism in the American heart, and the devotion of 
a million hands and lives to patriotic duty — is not this 
a blessing ? Could anything but war have won it ? 
That one thrill of patriotic indignation that passed 
through the American heart when the national flag was 
insulted at Fort Sumter, by those whom it had pro- 
tected for nearly a century, was worth more than the 
whole sum of emotion that had rolled up in lazy accu- 
mulation during the previous period of peace. It trans- 
formed every man into a hero ; it made a heroine of 



152 Working and Shirking. 

every woman. It was like the sudden flowering of the 
aloe, after sleeping through a century of suns. It burst 
upon the world like the comet that followed it— unher* 
aided, unexpected. Men saw the flaming glory, stream- 
ing up the midnight sky, and wondered from what depth 
of heaven it had sprung. 

And now there have gone forth a million of men, 
drawn from every walk of society, with their lives in 
their hands, to defend American nationality and Amer- 
ican institutions. The lawyer has left his briefs, the 
preacher has left his flock or taken it with him, the 
physician has forsaken his daily round of duty, the 
merchant his counting-room, the politician his in- 
trigues, and the rich man his home of ease ; the gov- 
ernor and the governed, the high and the humble, have 
gone together, and all have pressed forward, inspired 
by a common impulse, to do or die for home and native 
land. Men who have long been sleeping in their politi- 
cal sepulchres have come forth by a miracle of resur- 
rection, to the surprise of the doubtful and the joy of 
friends. That great number whose perch has been the 
fence through years of questionable manhood, have 
made haste to descend, and to declare themselves for 
their country against all foes. Women, used orJy to 
luxury, have laid aside their frivolous pursuits, and 
with busy fingers and the noblest charities have pre- 
pared mustering thousands of fathers and brothers and 



Working and Shirking. 153 

husbands and lovers for war. Nay, more : forsaking 
home and kindred and comfort and peace, they have 
gone forth voluntarily, at their own charges, and with- 
out hope of reward, to breathe the foul air of hospi- 
tals, and move among the cots of the sick and wound 
ed soldiery, with the sweet ministries of sympathy and 
mercy. Capital, timid and careful and compromising 
through years of political decay, and gathering signa 
of national disruption, has become bold and defiant. 
Noblest of all, it has thrown its giant arms around the 
tottering form of American nationality, and sworn to 
sustain it forever. It has brought its golden treasures, 
and laid them all at the feet of its country, and said : 
" Take them, for without thee they are worthless." If 
there could be one thing nobler than the eager readi- 
ness of a million of men to sacrifice their lives for their 
country, it would be the bold and unhesitating devo- 
tion of capital to the common cause. From its nature, 
it is the sign and seal of political salvation, and the 
harbinger of returning political virtue. 

There is no lack now of personal self-assertion. 
Ah men now have an opinion, and there are but few 
who have not been stiffened up to a determination to 
assert and maintain it against all forms of opposition. 
Political shirking is among the sins of the past. Men 
feel now, in their consciences and in their persona] 
interests, the burdens of the government, and under 
7* 



154 Working and Shirking. 

stand and feel, as they have nevei understood and felt 
before, their personal responsibility in public affairs 
When men fight for their country, and sacrifice their 
present prosperity and their accumulated treasure for 
their country, and voluntarily tax themselves through 
the remainder of their lives for their country, they will 
apprehend and faithfully discharge their personal re- 
sponsibilities in its government. 

He would be an unwise and a most unsafe physician 
who should prescribe war as a specific remedy for each 
of the national evils I have discussed, considered with- 
out relation to their cause ; but it must be remembered 
that they are the offspring of a common parent. It is 
because we have held our choicest blessings cheaply — 
it is because we have enjoyed them, like air and water, 
without price, and with no adequate sense of their 
value, that we have failed to appreciate the minor 
good, and, whenever possible, shirked its price. The 
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — a 
right for the acquisition and maintenance of which 
many a nation has struggled through centuries of blood 
and sacrifice — the right which the revolutionary fathers 
fought through weary years of suffering and privation 
to achieve — we have enjoyed without sacrifice, without 
price, and with only the feeblest sense of its value. 
The right to worship God according to the dictates of 
our own consciences, under forms of our own choice, — 



Working and Shirking. 155 

the right which the pilgrim fathers found in the wilder- 
ness after their weary search across the sea — has been 
ours without question and without cost. The right to 
govern ourselves — -asking no privilege of outside pow 
ers, and suffering no interference from them — has been 
as cheaply held as the right to breathe. It is thus that 
we have lost the standard by which to measure values, 
and learned to shirk the price demanded for our hum- 
bler wealth. 

The war remedy is a radical one. It strikes at the 
very root of the difficulty ; and I have no more doubt 
of its curative power than I have that Providence pre- 
scribes it. Whatever may be the issue of this war, it 
will leave us a better, a braver, and every way a nobler, 
people. It will leave us industrious, sober, willing to 
earn the good we enjoy. It will make us self-respect- 
ful, and self-asserting, at whatever cost of peace or 
popularity. Best of all, it will teach every man the 
value of the political blessings he enjoys, and place the 
government once more in the hands of the people, wno 
will restore to power the statesman so long discarded, 
and displace the politician forever. 



HIGH LIFE ARD LOW LIFE. 



LIFE is high or low according to its pursuits, 
pleasures, and motives. There may be, and, 
as a matter of fact, there often is, high life below 
stairs and low life in the drawing-room. There are 
palaces into which the conception of what consti- 
tutes high life has never entered. There are hovels 
so radiant and redolent with a high and beautiful life, 
that we count them courts of the immortals. There 
was conventional high life, I presume, in Sodom ; but 
the only variety which the angels recognized was 
found in Lot's tent, at the gate of the city ; and, for 
the rest, the flames disposed of it. There was a good 
deal of nominal high life, without doubt, among the 
antediluvians ; but there was only one family that was 
high enough to keep its head above water. 

Real high life and conventional high life have 
rarely been identical ; and, although the theme is not 
new, I have thought that a fresh presentation of it 



High Life and Low Life. 157 

might not be without interest and profit. The preach 
er, the social reformer, the philanthropist, the philoso* 
pher, the statesman, and the moralist, all drive at it 
from different directions, pushing their ideas toward 
a common centre, as the Indian hunters sweep the 
game of the prairies into a single inclosure. It cer- 
tainly ought not to be irksome to stand where the lines 
converge, and survey the group as it assembles. 

It will be useless for us to enter upon a discussion 
like this without a measure of honest faith in human 
nature, and in the perfectibility of human character. I 
believe there are such things in and among men as hon- 
or, virtue, truthfulness, dignity, unselfishness. I nei- 
ther propose nor oppose any theological dogma when 
I say that I believe in human nature. It is my nature, 
and, if God made me, it is the nature He gave me. 
There may be in it hereditary tendencies to evil — it 
would be strange if there were not ; but the nature 
itself is the finest and most glorious of all God's work, 
in this world, itself fitted up expressly for its habita- 
tion. Without this faith in human nature, high life is 
anything we may choose to call such, and low life is 
simply that which does not please us. I make this 
statement, in this way, because there are so many who, 
for various reasons, mostly found in their own hearts 
and lives, do not believe in the possibility of a human 
life organized, active, and permanent, above the plane 



158 High Life and Low Life. 

of selfishness and sensuality, forever free from the 
dominion of sordid motives, and tending only to divine 
issues. 

We shall arrive at a competent comprehension of 
human nature, and at what constitutes high and low 
life, by an illustration. Let us regard every rational 
man in the world as two men. E^ery individual shall 
be dividual into a master and a slave. Every man is 
constituted a man by the conjunction of an angel with 
an animal. Each has a distinct and characteristic will, 
distinct and characteristic affections, passions, powers, 
and destiny. One is limited in life, and dies as the ani- 
mals die. The other lives as the angels live, and is im- 
mortal. There is probably not a man or woman before 
me who is not conscious of the constant struggle going 
on between these two natures ; and I presume there is 
not one who is not conscious that all the real dignity 
of life comes through the thorough subordination of 
the animal to the angel within him. Let us listen to 
what our man in white and our man in black have to 
say to each other, 

The man in black, being irrational, and having no 
law but desire, says : " I wish to gorge myself with 
meat and drink ;" but the man in white is rational, and 
replies : " No ; that would harm you, and, as you are 
united with me, it would injure me." The man in black 
howls or whines, and begs for indulgence, but the man in 



High Life and Low Life. 159 

white repeats the prohibition, and shuts his ears. The 
man in black pleads for the object of his base desires, 
but the man in white shrinks from the suggestion with 
indignation and shame, and regards with tender honor 
her whom the man in black would pollute and ruin. 
The man in black is vain, and would dress himself in 
gaudy colors, like the animal or the savage. The man 
in white objects that he would not be his fit associate 
thus decorated. The man in black gets angry like a 
dog, but the man in white holds him by the collar 
until he is calm. The man in black is constantly 
calling the attention of the man in white to the 
objects of sense, and pleading for greater license, 
and offering sweet rewards for indulgence ; and strong 
and true as the man in white may be, he feels the in- 
fluence as a persistently degrading power. 

But the result of this conference is not always such 
as I have represented to you. The man in white is 
sometimes a very feeble man, and the man in black a 
very strong one. In such cases, the struggle may be 
as long as life, or it may be no struggle at all, and the 
man in black may have everything his own way. You 
have only to look into the haunts of vice — into the 
drinking-hells, the houses of shame, the prisons, the 
halls of revelry, the gambling-saloons, — nay, you have 
only to look into those decent dwellings where the 
gratifications of sense are sought for, or delighted in, 



ICO High Life and Low Life. 

alone, to find the man in white a miserable menial-^- 
the slave of the man in black, sharing in his debauche- 
ries, and pandering to his desires. If ever in these 
places the man in white asserts his will, the man in 
black tramples upon it. If the man in white says : 
" This is wrong," or " that is indecent — I will not obey 
you," the man in black leads him by the nose, and 
proves to him his hopeless subjection. The man in 
black blasphemes, or commits murder, or drowns him- 
self in drink, and the man in white serves him in all 
his crimes and debaucheries, and weeps between his 
helpless protests, or becomes so tainted by his society 
that he takes a hollow joy in his degrading service, 
and grows black with his companion. 

I believe in the slavery of this particular black man, 
and the natural superiority of this particular white man. 
I do not believe that the black man should be abused 
and killed, but that he should be properly fed, clothed, 
and taken care of; that while he is under perfect con- 
trol he should be indulged in his natural, healthful, and 
legitimate desires. But he is never to be master, never 
to take the lead, and never to hold an equal partnership 
in life with the white man. The latter is to be sove- 
reign, and to give the law of his own life to the life be- 
neath it. 

And now I drop my illustration, to make the propo- 
sition that high life is born of the dominance of the 



High Life and Low Life. 161 

soul over the body — born of the subordination of that 
portion of our natures which we share with the animals 
to the purposes and the welfare of that portion which 
we share with the angels. There can be no perfection 
of human character without this. There can be no 
such thing as good society without this ; and this can 
be, or human life is no more than a sorry jest, prac- 
tised upon a race of beings called into existence for 
that purpose. I have no knack at splitting theological 
hairs, or dodging the knives of those who do ; but of 
this one thing I am as certain as I am that there is a 
God in heaven, and that He has given me the faculty 
of reason, viz. : that human ability and human respon- 
sibility never part company. It seems the extreme of 
scholastic idiocy to preach human inability out of one 
corner of the mouth and human responsibility out of 
the other, — to erect in the eyes of the world, as the 
representative of humanity, an effigy of helpless and 
hopeless pollution, and, shaking the scroll of a perfect 
law in its face, say : " You must, but you can't ; you 
ought to, but it is impossible." I believe in human 
responsibility, and with-it the essential condition of 
human ability, or I do not believe in anything. With- 
out these, progress can have no path, and perfection 
no fulfilment. 

I have said that the inferior man is to be properly 
e ed, clothed, and taken care of. This must be, because 



162 High Life and Low Life. 

the superior man lives in him, and, in the present state 
of existence, by means of him. The necessities of the 
case put the inferior man to labor under the superior 
man's direction and constraint. The animal in man is 
always lazy, and needs to be driven to its work like the 
animal in the stall : and here we strike the question of 
labor as it relates to our subject. 

We find the whole world engaged in getting a liv- 
ing — getting food to eat, clothes to wear, houses to 
dwell in, carriages to ride in — comforts, helps, luxu- 
ries, for the sole use of the body. This care for the 
body by the soul has, with great universality, degene- 
rated into a slavery of the soul to the body. The great 
masses of men and women do nothing else all their 
lives but labor to supply themselves and their depend- 
ents with the means of comfortable subsistence. 
There seems at present to be no help for this. There 
is something to hope for in the wider diffusion of 
wealth and the invention of labor-saving machinery — 
the multiplication of man-power without an increase 
of consumption ; but even these consummations will 
amount to little in the relief of labor, in a country 
where the rewards of material enterprise are limitless, 
and wealth is regarded as the chief good. The compre- 
hension of the essential distinction between getting a 
living, and living, is a matter of education. 

I do not deny that there is a certain amount of edu 



High Life and Low Life. 1G3 

cation — of soul-culture — nay, I do not deny that there 
is a certain amount of spiritual satisfaction, in intelli 
gent labor. The man in black works under the impul- 
sion and direction of the man in white, and, in the 
exercise, the man in white finds food for his faculties, 
gains a knowledge of mental and material forces, dis- 
covers the qualities of things, and secures a healthful 
expenditure of his constantly generated energies. It 
is happily ordained that this shall be so, because it 
secures a certain amount of development to every man, 
whatever his circumstances may be. But work of the 
body is not life, in any high sense ; and those who 
prate of labor and worship as in any way identical are 
the shallowest of dreamers. Work is the means of liv- 
ing, but it is not living. The aeronaut fills his balloon, 
and then rises and floats. Floating is what the balloon 
was made for. It takes in its breath below, and it can 
be held by a leash to the earth it spurns ; but its true 
life begins when the cords are loosed, and it becomes 
a companion of the clouds. 

I once found myself, on a cold winter morning, in 
a manufacturing village. At four o'clock — still more 
than three hours to sunrise, and three hours before 
dawn — the bells of the factories were rung to waken 
the operatives to their day of toil. Half an hour after- 
wards they w^ent to their work, at which they remained 
until six, when they breakfasted. Half an hour was 



164 High Life and Low Life. 

given to the meal, when work was resumed, and con- 
tinued until twelve, when they dined. Half an hou* 
was also given to this meal, and then they entered the 
mills and worked until seven, after which came supper. 
More than fifteen hours between bell and bell, with 
only one hour out of the number in which, silently, 
two meals were bolted, with no more of the dignities 
and amenities of life at the table than may be found at 
the manger during cattle-feeding ! Strong men, tender 
women, almost children, kept to this work, not one day 
only, but six days of every week, and fifty-two weeks 
of every year, unless the water should fail, when the 
wages go down with the gate ! How much of a 
chance, think you, does the man in white have in such 
a life as this ? 

It is complained that manufacturing towns are low 
places ; that religious institutions do not thrive there ; 
that literary societies are not supported there ; that peo- 
ple will hot turn out to lectures there ; that the Sabbath 
is sadly broken there, or sadly idled away ; that there 
is no reading and no mental improvement there. Nice 
people, who own manufacturing stocks and live upon 
the dividends, lament this. It is further complained 
that operatives drink, and go on sprees, and throng the 
circuses, and crowd the halls of the negro minstrels, 
and support the low places of amusement, to the 
neglect of all that is elevating and refining. Do you 



High Life and Low Life. 165 

wonder at it ? Would you not wonder if they did 
anything else ? A man who works until there is no 
life left in him, and who feels that to-morrow is to 
be like to-day, must be amused. I do not wonder 
that he should prefer to hear a negro minstrel or a 
clown to hearing me. Nay, nor do I blame him for 
his preference. If I were in his place, I am sure that 
I should do as he does; and it is my well-adjusted con- 
viction that the clown would benefit me more than the 
lecturer ; that the hour's relief he would give me from 
the consciousness of my slavery, would do more to 
make my lot tolerable than any exercise which would 
still further tax my weakness, or which would give me 
glimpses of a life that my lot places beyond my reali- 
zation. 

You will admit that to such a community as this 
high life is not attainable. There is no time for society 
but such as may be stolen from the hours of sleep. A 
man who has been on his feet fifteen hours is unfitted 
for society, unfitted for intellectual efforts and entertain- 
ments, unfitted for religious exercises, unfitted for any- 
thing and everything that pertains to a higher life. 
He is the slave of labor ; and although there are a few 
who have sufficient vitality to stand up against the 
depressing influence of this slavery, and a few who 
move upon a higher plane by impetus of early habits, 
^acquired under more favorable circumstances, the 



166 High Life and Low Life. 



masses are bound to low life by a bond which they will 
never sunder, and which it is well-nigh impossible for 
them to sunder. 

Now that there is a great wrong involved in a sys- 
tem of labor which absolutely compels a class, and that 
a large one in some parts of the country, and growing 
larger every year, to a life of low aims, attainments, 
and enjoyments, there can be no doubt. Perhaps you 
will say that the case I have cited is an exceptional 
one. I think it is, but the average hours of labor in 
our factories do not yield a much better result. The 
worst of the matter is, that no way seems apparent for 
remedying the evil. The manufacturing of Great Brit- 
ain, and indeed of all Europe, is set to this key, and 
the manufacturing of America comes into competition 
with it, and, to be successful, must harmonize with it. 
Reform would, in many instances, be the ruin of the 
manufacturer, and the loss of all labor to those in his 
employ. The whole machinery of trade has been 
adjusted to these hours and the values which are 
established by them, and change could not come 
without a revolution in prices. As reform, to be 
practicable and permanent, must be general, and as so 
many selfish interests are involved, I confess that the 
case looks hopeless enough to me. I can only fall 
back on my faith in the gradual melioration of the con- 
dition of society, and the operation of those principles 



High Life and Low Life. 167 

of justice and humanity which are embodied in Chris- 
tian civilization. 

But the factories are not alone in their denial of 
high life to laboring men and women. The retail 
stores, the milliners', dress-makers', and tailors' shops — 
all shops where the work is simple, and devoted to the 
production of articles of common necessity, compel 
long hours, and render it practically impossible for 
their inmates to make much progress in intellectual, 
social, and religious excellence. It is not possible for 
them to do more than work and eat and sleep, and get 
such brief out-of-door relief and amusement as will 
keep their lives from becoming utterly tasteless. 

Now I confess to a deep and tender sympathy with 
these people. They are found fault with for being 
exactly what their work, through a natural influence, 
makes them. They could not be otherwise without a 
constant struggle against this influence. They are 
blamed because they do not love reading, because they 
do not seek elevating society, because they love carou- 
sals and gay assemblies and buffoonery, because they 
break the Sabbath and will not attend church. Why, 
the great, crying, everlasting need of these men is rest 
and amusement. The call for these is the voice of 
God in them. Books do not satisfy it ; intellectual 
society does not satisfy it ; preaching does not satisfy 
it ; and when I see one of these pale fellows or pale 



1(58 High Life and Low Life. 

girls, after having worked through every working hour 
of the week, walking out among the trees and flowers 
and grass on Sunday, enjoying the beauty of God's 
world, breathing the pure air and enjoying the rare 
luxury of the blessed sunlight, I say in my heart that 
it is right. It is enough for our cupidity to enslave 
them in the name of Mammon for six days of the 
week. It is too much for our bigotry to enslave them 
in the name of God on the seventh. 

And now, if we turn to the consideration of volun- 
tary slavery to labor, we shall find that the man in 
white has but little better entertainment in it than 
in that which is involuntary. So far as the effect on 
the quality of life is concerned, the voluntary devotion 
of a man's entire energies to bodily labor is as disas- 
trous as if it were compulsory. From the small farmer 
and the wife who is the partner of his toils and for- 
tunes, to the merchant whose transactions involve annual 
millions ; from the maker of a button to the builder of 
a navy ; throughout the whole range of trades and occu- 
pations, we shall witness a voluntary devotion of time 
and vital resources to labor — to getting a living and to 
hoarding for real wants or superfluous wealth — which 
leaves real living entirely out of contemplation, and 
places it beyond possibility. 

But let us understand a little more definitely what 
real living is. We all know what getting a living is ; 



High Life and Low Life. 169 

now what is it to live ? It is to engage in and enjoy 
intellectual activity outside of, and above, that which 
is occupied in the provision for bodily needs ; to acquire 
and enjoy knowledge and the power which is born of 
it ; to give free exercise to social sympathy in a pure 
intercourse with young and old ; to have sweet satis- 
faction in home, so that it shall be the one bright spot 
of all the earth, never left without a sense of sacrifice ; 
to take delight in those things which rise above the 
bare utilities of life into the realm of the tasteful and 
beautiful, and to cultivate the x arts which make that 
realm attractive; to be happy in the activity of the 
moral and religious nature — in worship and in minis- 
try : this it is to live. 

It will be seen that living and getting a living are 
very different things, and that it requires time to live 
just as really as it requires time to get a living. A 
man who labors by compulsion, or by choice, fifteen 
hours of every twenty-four, has no time to live. If 
the life of man has any rewards above that of the 
animal, they must be found in this upper life : yet how 
few are they who look to this upper life for their 
rewards ! The fact explains the unsatisfactory nature 
of wealth, and the countless failures in the search for 
happiness which every man has seen. Let us glance 
at the career of a representative mercantile man. 
From the age of fourteen to twenty-one he is a clerk 
8 



170 High Life and Low Life. 

with a mean salary, and with such confinement to long 
hours that he finds no time for mental improvement, 
and no time for the development of social and aesthetic 
tastes. He enters business early, with a limited capi- 
tal, or with no capital at all, and for twenty-five or 
thirty years he is certain, unless he dies, to be the 
slave of his business. For twenty-five or thirty years 
he feels obliged to hold the man in white within him 
to unrelieved bondage. He does not enjoy home. He 
does not enjoy leisure when circumstances bring it. 
His shop or his counting-room is the centre of his 
thoughts. Visitors at his house are never welcome, 
if they interfere with business, or take any of his time. 
His wife and children see nothing of him. He is not 
felt or seen in society. He is known only as an active, 
devoted, business man, and thrifty as a consequence. 

Let it be remembered that during all these years he 
has been carrying in his mind the thought that he is 
getting ready to live. He knows that he is not living 
— knows that there is something better in life than 
what he gets out of it, and expects that after the body 
is provided for, with an ample margin for the future, 
he will then begin to live, and enjoy the reward of his 
industry. So, at last, having acquired money enough, 
he retires from business, and finds — poor man ! — that 
he does not know how to live. Of all the miserable 
men in the world, I know of none more hopeless and 



High Life and Low Life. 171 

helpless than a man of acquired wealth who retires 
from business to make his first experiment in living. 
Such an experiment usually results in one of thiee 
ways, viz., he sickens and dies with the effect of a 
change of habits and with disappointment, or he 
returns to his business, or he fritters away his life in 
aimless activities. The real man within him has been 
a slave to business so long that he cannot rise into 
independent life. A man who does not learn to live 
while he is getting a living, is a poorer man after his 
wealth is won than he was before. There is no way 
to learn how to live, and there is no way to live, 
except by keeping a life organized and in operation 
above and outside of the labors and enterprises in- 
volved in getting a living. 

When I see at a cottage-door little patches and 
pots of flowers, and, entering, I find a row of books 
upon the shelf, and a newspaper on the table, and a 
few pictures on the walls in domestic frames ; and 
when, on a Sunday morning, I see issuing from this 
door a neatly-dressed group which takes its way to the 
village-church, I know that the inmates have got hold 
of life — got hold of something better than gold — some- 
thing which lifts them above their lot. Their time, I 
know, is mainly spent in getting a living, but they find 
some time to live, and find something in life that gives 
them dignity. 



172 High Life and Low Life. 

It is always. delightful to see a man getting at the 
secret of living ; and I suppose we have all witnessed 
some strange transformations of character consequent 
upon discoveries of this kind. I have seen men intro- 
duced to life by the reading of a poem or a story, 
which so stirred them, so revealed to them their own 
higher natures, so discovered to them fresh and attrac- 
tive fields of pleasure, that they became new men from 
that moment. Straightway they chose new associates, 
and bought new books, and sought for new pictures, 
having already found new meaning in the old ones. 
New visions met them on the sea, and in the sky, and 
around them on the earth. That which had been their 
throne became their footstool. That which they had 
hitherto regarded as a realm of visions and illusions 
became their home. 

I have seen a man, thoroughly absorbed in business, 
introduced to life by being compelled for a single win- 
ter to care for a few pots of flowers. The flowers 
became to him teachers, preachers, inspirers. They 
converted him — transformed him. Now, whenever ho 
can steal away from his business, he is in his garden, 
where everything he touches thrives. You will see his 
name in all the horticultural reports of the section in 
which he lives, and if you enter his dwelling, you will 
find everything brought into harmony with his newly 
born taste ; and you will find him living and enjoying 



High Life and Low Life. 173 

life, and preparing to enjoy still more the wealth which 
his busy hands and tireless enterprise are acquiring. 

Mr. Wemmick, in " Great Expectations," under- 
stood this matter very well. The office of Mr. Jaggers 
was by no means the place where he lived, or found the 
rewards of his life. I think that little castle of his at 
Walworth one of the most delightful and suggestive 
of all Dickens's creations. The real flag-staff, the 
draw-bridge made of a single plank, the gun fired 
every night at nine o'clock Greenwich time, the ar- 
rangements for standing an imaginary siege, and the 
effort to excite the admiration and secure the content- 
ment of the aged parent, are strokes of real genius. 
Wemmick's, philosophy was even better than his at- 
tempt at its embodiment. " The office," says Wem- 
mick, " is one thing, and private life is another. When 
I go into the office, I leave the castle behind me ; and 
when I come into the castle, I leave the office behind me." 
His attempt to realize something in life which should re- 
ward him for the tedious detail of an unpleasant busi- 
ness was peculiar, perhaps, but his theory was correct. 

I do not happen to believe in the ennobling influ- 
ence of constant physical labor. It is noble and enno- 
bling to labor with a high motive — to labor for per- 
sonal independence, or for any great and good end 
which involves the soul's prosperity ; but to labor for 
bodily subsistence, throughout one's life, is not enno- 



174 High Life and Low Life. 

bring at all. If I wished utterly to degrade a nation, I 
would keep it to constant labor for the supply of bodily 
needs. What such labor as this has done for slaves of 
all colors, and what it has done for the peasantries of 
the world, we all know. Strict confinement to such 
labor as this is necessarily low life. It is bondage to 
the body ; and high life is only to be realized when the 
body becomes the soul's servant in its high pursuits 
and its pure satisfactions. 

Again, the character of life is determined by its 
pleasures. I have already incidentally touched upon 
this, but it requires more definite treatment. There is 
a natural desire in every soul for pleasure. It begins 
with infancy and lasts as long as life. And here, as we 
have already seen, the man in white and the man in 
black are at variance. All life that seeks and secures 
its best satisfactions in the pleasures of sense is low, 
and you may judge how much of that which is called 
high life is really such. I beg you not to misunder- 
stand me here. I believe that the pleasures of sense 
are just as legitimate as the pleasures of the soul, 
and that they may be, and should be, a portion of 
the pleasures of the soul. God never ordained the 
pleasure-giving power of the senses for the simple pur- 
pose of denying its indulgence. I have no faith in the 
beneficence of any creed which imposes indiscriminate 
mortification of the senses as sources of pleasure. Such 



High Life and Low Life. 175 

a creed is alike inhuman and ungodly. I believe that 
there is not a pleasure of sense, from the least to the 
greatest, which may not, under legitimate conditions 
and limitations, be made a minister to the soul's life — 
to what I have called high life — and which was not 
intended to be such a minister. It is when the plea- 
sures of sense are sought for and indulged in as the 
chief satisfactions of life — when the soul devotes itself 
to the procurement and enjoyment of these pleasures 
— that they are perverted, and that they taint the char- 
acter of life with vulgarity and animalism. I believe 
a keen enjoyment of sensual pleasure entirely compati- 
ble with a high life which shall be the master of the 
senses, and which shall hold them subordinate to itself 
and its own peculiar delights. 

All slavery is low life, of whatever sort it may be, 
and the most abject of all slaves is he who is bound 
to his senses as the sole or supreme sources of plea- 
sure. The nature of this slavery can be read in its 
results. The drunkard and the glutton are always low- 
lived men. There are some instances in which the soul 
tries to keep up its life in the midst of sensual slavery. 
It is a sort of mongrel life, and always ends in the 
reform of one life or the destruction of the other. 
There are grosser forms of sensual indulgence, having 
a peculiar power, when relied upon for satisfaction, to 
bestialize men, and to impose the lowest life upon their 



176 High Life and Low Life. 

» 1 ! « 

devotees. I say that high life is impossible to any per- 
son who relies upon the ministry of sense for his choi- 
cest pleasures. Even music itself, divine as it may be 
made, and purifying and elevating as it is when used 
aright, may become degrading, as all know who have 
with sadness marked the low life of many who are 
devoted to it. The pleasures of sense have no power 
in and of themselves to lift a man above the brutes 
around him ; and he who clings to them as his chief 
delight, and makes their acquisition his principal pur- 
suit, is more a brute than a man. It matters not how 
or where such a man lives, or what his social position 
may be ; he is low-lived — unfit for good society — out 
of place in any sphere of high life. 

The pleasures of the mind, the soul, the heart — of all 
those departments of the human nature which charac- 
terize it as human nature — are the pleasures of high life, 
and they are as various as the forms and phases of that 
nature. The difficulty is that, in our absorption in the 
business of getting a living, we do not have time and 
opportunity for a culture broad enough to make all 
these sources of high pleasure available. One man 
gets a taste of knowledge, and spends his life in the 
pleasure of acquiring it. Another takes his principal 
delight in the production of works of beauty, or in the 
study and possession of them. Another is most delight- 
ed with poetry. Another has his highest satisfaction 



High Life and Low Life. 177 



in science or philosophy, while his neighbor has his life 
in pure society : with strong human sympathies, he 
delights to mingle with his kind, in the active life of 
the affections. Another has his highest pleasure in 
religion, in worship, in the practice of works of benevo- 
lence. 

Now all these men live a high life, but not the 
highest possible to them. It is not possible that all 
men shall grasp all the pleasures of high life, because 
of the variety in the constitution of their natures ; but 
all can take a broader sweep than they do. Almost 
the entire high life of the working classes — and, practi- 
cally, the working classes embrace nearly all of us — is 
connected with religion. The only time the most of 
us have for living is Sunday. The remaining six days 
of the week are devoted to getting a living. By reli- 
gious people and their families, and — in this country, 
among those American-born — by the people generally, 
there is no culture but that which is religious deemed 
legitimate on Sunday, and none but religious pleasures 
accounted consistent with the sacred character of the 
day. To this fact is attributable the dry and unattrac- 
ti v r e character of a great multitude of religious people. 
They occupy but a single sphere of high life, and their 
lack of culture in other directions naturally and almost 
necessarily makes their religion of the hardest and 
most ungenerous type. There is no mistaking the fact, 



178 High Life and Low Life. 

that many of the Christian people of the world are 
held in contempt by men of culture in other depart- 
ments of high life, because they are so utterly barren, 
so one-sided, so lacking in all matters of intellectual 
culture. There is no mistaking the fact, that Christian- 
ity suffers in its reputation among a large class of intel- 
lectual people because so large a number of its profes- 
sors lack culture in all other directions. The religion 
which they represent has no breadth of view, no com- 
prehension of great principles, no grand and all-embra- 
cing sympathies and charities, and not only no tasce 
for the pure pleasures of the intellect, but a certain 
degree of contempt for them, or moral aversion to 
them. It has seemed to be the policy of some church- 
es to repress the intellect, to decry reason, and to 
reckon the higher accomplishments of the mind as 
only ministers to human pride. Now my idea of a 
Christian is, that he should be the most generous, culti 
vated, and attractive man in the world ; and my belief 
is, that the more widely he can extend the realm of his 
pleasures in the domain of high life, the more thor 
oughly will he comprehend and enjoy his religion, and 
the more will he be able by his life and character to 
commend that religion to the esteem of all. 

But the man who is devoted exclusively to intellec- 
tual pleasures is quite as one-sided and quite as dry 
and unattractive as he whose only hold upon high life 



High Life and Low Life. 179 

is through his religion — possibly more so. The unde- 
vout astronomer is not only mad, but mean. An irreli- 
gious man whom a love for intellectual pleasure has 
freed from the dominion of his lower nature, lacks still 
the grandest element of high life. 

It is a matter of surprise to many that culture in 
high life is so almost universally partial. There are 
two facts which lie on the surface of things, patent to 
common observers, viz., that highly intellectual people 
are not oommonly highly religious people, and that 
highly religious people are not commonly highly 
intellectual. I do not state these facts as unvarying 
rules, but the^ are common enough to be commonly 
observed, and notorious enough to be beyond contra- 
vention. The great masses of church-members you 
will find to be simple people. Perhaps the great 
masses are always simple people ; but in the church 
you will find them out of proportion to those of 
decided intellectual culture. And is it not true that 
the majority of intellectual people make no pretensions 
to piety, while many make light of it altogether, as 
something weak and childish ? The proportion of pro- 
fessional men who are actively religious is small, and 
those are not usually foremost in mental gifts and 
accomplishments. It is a matter of popular regret that 
our great men who rise to important places in the 
nation's councils, and who have a predominant influ 



180 High Life and Low Life. 

ence in national affairs, are generally either without 
religious character, or with strong passions un- 
chastened and uncontrolled. This is so notorious 
that many have come to regard religion as something 
that will do very well for humble people, and for 
women, while men of strength, and intellect are above 
it. This idea prevails not only among professional 
and highly intellectual men, but it largely pervades the 
mechanical mind of the country. An ingenious, inven- 
tive, and skilful mechanic, who has an absorbing in- 
terest in his pursuits, is rarely a Christian — rarely reli- 
gious — and none are more aware of this than mechanics 
themselves. 

Now why is this ? Is an intellectual man or an 
ingenious man more depraved in consequence x)f his 
superiority, or is he by his superiority really raised 
above religion ? Neither. It is mainly because he 
becomes absorbed by the sources of pleasure which 
have been opened to him in his intellect, and thus has 
no room for the motive which would extend his cul- 
ture to the rest of his higher nature. The religious life 
of the masses is barren and unattractive for a similar 
reason. They cultivate their hearts to the neglect, 
certainly, if not at the expense, of their brains ; while 
those who despise them cultivate their brains at the 
expense of their hearts. Each class is absorbed in its 
own sphere of pleasure, and the result is as bad as it 



High Life and Low Life. 181 

can be. The intellectual giants of the world give us a 
Christless literature, and refuse to treat religion as any- 
thing more than a useful delusion, or fail to speak of it 
at all, while people of common gifts and ordinary cul- 
ture are left to represent a religion which holds within 
it the wealth of the world, and the highest and purest 
sources of pleasure which God has discovered to the 
race. The world has produced but few Miltons and 
Newtons, but a number sufficient to show us what a 
noble creature man is when he consents to drink at all 
those fountains which have been opened for the satis- 
faction of his higher nature. 

The present age has produced one man whom I 
accept as one of the most beautiful instances of broad 
culture and high life with which I am acquainted, 
through observation or history. I have no fitting 
words with which to express my admiration of this 
man. With a power, grace, and brilliancy of poetic 
expression which place him in the front rank of those 
who write the English language, an industry that is tire- 
less in its search after and study of truth, a love for 
and a knowledge of art far surpassing all who live and 
all who have lived before him, a moral courage that 
tramples upon conventionalities as if they were chaff*, 
and that gallantly, attacks the most venerable errors, 
regardless of the spite of their petty upholders — with 
all these, he unites the most reverent adoration of the 



182 



High Life and Low Life. 



great Jehovah, the sweetest trust in Jesus Christ, and 
the sublimest faith i in the revelations of the Old and 
New Testaments. To this man, the intellect 'of the 
world bows as to a master. The lovers of art accept 
his dictum as that of an anointed king. The man of 
culture is content if he can read, understand, and ex- 
pound him, and the Christian, whether high or hum- 
ble, recognizes him as a brother in Jesus Christ. 

No man can read the works of John Ruskin with- 
out learning that his sources of pleasure are well-nigh 
infinite. There is not a flower, nor a cloud, nor a tree, 
nor a mountain, nor a star ; not a bird that fans the air, 
nor a creature that walks the earth ; not a glimpse of 
sea or sky or meadow-greenery; not a work of worthy 
art in the domains of painting, sculpture, poetry, and 
architecture; not a thought of God as the Great Spirit 
presiding over and informing all things, that is not to 
him a source of the sweetest pleasure. The whole 
world of matter and of spirit, and the long record of 
human art, are open to him as the never-failing foun- 
tains of his delight. In these pure realms he seeks his 
daily food and has his daily life. 

This man, so full of pleasure, is a reformer. In the 
domain of art he moves the world. A pagan archi 
tecture dies before his sturdy strokes, and in the revi 
val of the Gothic he is Christianizing the face of Chris 
tendom. Architecture, emancipated by him, has noth- 



High Life and Low Life. 183 

mg before it now but progress. Painting, which had 
bowed so long to the authority of the masters, has 
been released by him from the degrading servitude, 
and led back free to its mother nature. Above all, he 
has sanctified the literature of art, and has demon- 
strated in his own personal life and character that a 
man, to be truly great, and to have all his intellectual 
nature enriched and rendered superlatively fruitful, 
must be a religious man. I hold up this man as a 
representative of high life, and as an illustration of the 
normal union of all the highest pleasures of the intel- 
lect and the heart, and of the ministry of these plea- 
sures to the symmetrical development and power of 
the man. 

There is still another point in this discussion. I 
have treated of pursuits and pleasures as determinative 
of the character of life. It remains to treat of mo- 
tives. 

What is a motive ? It is a source of motion. We 
enter a mill, and find all the spindles awhirr, and all the 
shuttles flying, and all the complementary machinery 
in operation for the production of a certain fabric, the 
accomplishment of a bertain end. At last, we descend 
to the wheel-pit, where, shut away from common ob- 
servation, the great wheel, turned by the water of a 
passing stream, swings its ponderous arms — the source 
of all the motion we have seen above it. This is the 



184 High Life and Low Life. 

motive of the mill. Thus, is the engine the motive of 
the steamer ; the mainspring, of the watch ; the heart, 
of the vascular system of the living body. And wher- 
ever we see a great human life in progress, in the pro- 
duction of notable results, we may always know that 
there is something within it which drives it — a motive- 
power. It may be a mixed power, as we sometimes 
find steam and water joined in the driving of a mill. 
We have already seen that the necessities of the body 
are powerful and very prevalent motives of life. We 
have also seen that our love of pleasure in the various 
spheres of high and low life is a motive of great power, 
and by these we may learn how everything that gives 
action and direction to life is a motive of life. One or 
two of these motives, in consequence of their promi- 
nence and prevalence, call for separate and direct treat- 
ment. 

The first to be noticed is ambition. There is in the 
human mind a natural desire for distinction — for being, 
or acquiring, something which shall lift the individual 
above the mass, and give him consideration with his 
fellows. Some strive for power, and these seek it 
mainly in political place and preferment. Some seek 
only for notoriety, and resort to many means for keep- 
ing their names before the public. Others are greedy 
for fame, a higher and a better prize than notoriety. 
In oratory, in literature, in war, in ten thousand fields 



High Life and Low Life. 185 

of human action, it impels to the greatest sacrifices of 
time and strength and safety. It urges the traveliei 
through dangerous fields of discovery ; it inspires Blon- 
din on his rope ; it nerves the wrestler at his game, 
and gives power and patience to the noblest of the 
workers in art. Indeed, it comes in as an aid to much 
of the worthiest work of the world. A desire so natu- 
ral and so universal as this — a desire that so readily 
joins hands with the highest motives of which we are 
conscious — must have a legitimate sphere of operation, 
and must, when confined to this sphere, be entirely 
consistent with the highest life. When it is united 
with a sincere love of men, and an honest regard for the 
claims of Christian duty ; when it is held subordinate 
and subsidiary to the universal good ; when it lusts for 
and grasps at nothing which actual excellence of power 
and character may not legitimately claim, then it is 
good in itself and good in its results. It is right for a 
man to desire to excel in anything worthy of a man. 
It is right for a man to love high position and to seek 
it in right ways. It is when ambition becomes the 
single or supreme motive of life that it is wrong. In 
such cases it is invariably selfish and base, and gives to 
the mind in which it has its seat, and the life which 
proceeds from it, a low and vulgar character. 

No man, for instance, can follow politics and place- 
hunting- as the business of his life, impelled thereto by 



186 High Life and Low Life. 

his desire for distinction, without being, or becoming, 
a low-lived man. The man whose ruling motive of life 
is the desire for political distinction is a mean man, no 
matter whether he occupies the bench of a country jus- 
tice, or the chair of the President of the United States. 
And this explains fully why it is that our politics are so 
corrupt, and why, almost invariably, our politicians are 
men without moral principle. They are self-seeking 
men, almost exclusively, and the result upon the nation 
is as bad as it is upon themselves. This accursed selfish 
ambition is at the root of all the political evils we suffer 
from to-day, and the parent of the whole series of hor- 
rors through which we have passed during the last few 
years. If only those men had been intrusted with 
power whose love of God and their country surpassed 
their love of themselves and their love of place, not 
one drop of blood, and not one cent of money, which 
the Great Rebellion has cost would have been called 
for. But for these men, we should have remained a 
united and a happy nation. They have dechristianized 
our politics, demoralized our nation, and dethroned 
God in the national councils ; and nothing but the 
-unselfish virtues of the people have saved the country 
from irretrievable wreck. 

What is Washington life ? Is it high life ? Do 
good people love to go to Washington and remain : 
Like calls to itself like. It is, and it has always been, 



High Life and Low Life. 187 

a home of gamblers and courtesans and corruptionists. 
I do not question that there are good men there, but 1 
believe that the majority of those in place are, and for 
the past fifty years have been, low-lived men. The life 
that is lived there is a selfish one ; and a selfish life is 
always low. I state a notorious fact, when I say that 
it is almost as much as a decent man's character is 
worth to become actively engaged in politics. He is 
obliged to come into association and competition with 
so many unfair and unprincipled men ; he is obliged to 
meet and struggle with such meanness and mendacity ; 
he is obliged to adopt or countenance so much immoral 
machinery, that his moral sense becomes sophisticated. 
There are offices in this country whose responsibilities 
are great, and whose honors once corresponded with 
their responsibilities, that good men decline to accept 
because of the low life which has lied and cheated 
and bought its way into them. These men cannot 
afford the loss of moral and social caste which connec- 
tion with these offices would inflict upon them. 

"We live under that which is theoretically a popular 
government — what we comfort ourselves by calling a 
popular government. A popular government ? What 
have the people had to do with it ? Have they select- 
ed their office-holders and their rulers ? Have the}^ 
with a Christian conscience, sought among the wise 
and good of the land, and, selecting the wisest and the 



188 High Life and Low Life. 

best, placed thera in office and in power ? Not at all 
Politicians get themselves nominated. They nominate 
one another. Choice of men is determined in newspa- 
per offices, in little cliques and cabals, composed of men 
who have axes to grind ; in primary meetings, packed 
and managed by interested demagogues ; and when 
election-day comes, the people, lacking wisdom or 
organization to do otherwise, vote for the least objec- 
tionable political candidate presented to them, and 
vote blindly at that. The people are simply used for 
the purpose of effecting the aims of the demagogues. 
I do not suppose that one man in twenty who votes, 
ever in his life had anything to do directly or indirectly 
in selecting the candidates for office whom he has an- 
nually assisted in electing, or in trying to elect. 

Ours a government of the people ? Why, it has 
been a government of the politicians for half a century 
—of a set of men who, in the main, are actuated by no 
higher motives than a love of plunder and of place ; 
and these are the men — low-lived and selfish and mean 
— who make the laws and preside over the destinies of 
a Christian nation ! With all this selfishness and low 
life and low motive in politics, is it to be wondered at 
that we have political convulsions ? The grand motive- 
power in our government has for years been personal 
and political ambition. Religion, as an element of 
political power and life, has been persistently counted 



" High Life and Low Life. 189 

out ; and when its aid has been invoked to secure an 
election, it has been done selfishly in the main. The 
people are religious : the politicians are not. 

We shall find at the political centres that which 
claims to be high life, in the highest meaning of the 
phrase. Fashion and fools fall down before this life, 
and worship it. This is one of the foulest ills which it 
breeds in society — that, by the forwardness of its arro- 
gance, it overtops all other life, and holds itself before 
the public with its intellectual culture, and its low aims 
and motives, as really and distinctively the high life of 
the nation. We hear of movements in high life, and 
scandal in high life. We hear of high life attending 
church, as if Jehovah had been honored in an unusual 
way. High life dances, and Jenkins informs the public 
what it wore on the occasion. High life occupies a box 
at the theatre, and gets the fact reported. High life 
gets married, and some toadying press announces that 
the Hon. Mr. So-and-so, member of Congress from a 
certain district in Massachusetts, or New York, or 
Ohio, has led to the hymeneal altar the beautiful and 
highly accomplished daughter of the Hon. Mr. What's- 
his-name, of the Cabinet or the Senate. And this an- 
nouncement goes the round of the newsmongers, as an 
instance of a " marriage in high life." Does the honor- 
able member, who got his seat by the most dishonora- 
ble demagogism, protest ? Does the beautiful and 



190 High Life and Low Life. 

highly accomplished daughter of the Hon. Mr. What's- 
his-name, who is a played-out belle and a mercenary 
husband-hunter, blush at her vulgar notoriety ? Does 
the Hon. Mr. What's-his-name, who is very happy to 
shift the expenses of his lovely daughter to other shoul- 
ders, and grind a political axe at the same time, object ? 
Oh ! no ; this is high life — dignified life — the life most 
directly associated with the government — the social 
life that goes with successful politics. You would 
blush, and so would your modest and Christian daugh- 
ters ; but high life, such as we find at the political cen- 
tres, never blushes. It has no thought that is not self- 
ishly devoted to personal aggrandizement. 

A gambler is a gambler ; and I know of no moral 
difference between the gambler in politics and the gam- 
bler in money, to whom he is so fond of playing away 
his little salary, and the profits of his little jobs. There 
is no moral difference between them ; and there is no 
reason why one should be regarded as belonging to 
high life more than the other. Life takes the char- 
acter of its motive ; and all selfishness is irredeemably 
low. 

The desire for wealth is a great and almost univer- 
sal motive of life. There is nothing necessarily wrong, 
or low, in the desire for wealth. As a means of good 
to the possessor and to the world, when rightly used, 
the usefulness and desirableness of wealth are hardly tc 



High Life and Low Life. 19] 

be over-estimated. Wealth fills the world with beauti- 
ful architecture, hangs halls and walls with pictures, iills 
libraries w r ith books, builds churches and colleges, fur- 
nishes the life-blood of great charities, relieves from 
the slavery and the hard economies of labor, commands 
time for culture and for living, procures the comforts 
of independence, furnishes the sinews of war, constructs 
railroads and navies, and gives wings to commerce. 
The pursuit of wealth under right motives, or, rather, 
for right ends, is as legitimate as the pursuit of compe- 
tence. It is only when wealth is pursued for its own 
sake, or for the sake of the distinction or the low de- 
lights which it secures, that it becomes vulgar. How 
generally wealth is pursued with these low aims, I 
leave you to be the judges. How often the claim to 
respectability is based upon material possessions, we all 
know. Society -holds many men and many families, 
whose pole claim to a respectable position is based 
upon the possession of money. Mr. Jones, the grocer, 
was a common sort of man enough when he was poor, 
and bis family were not recognized in the conventional 
high life around him. But Mr. Jones, wishing to get 
into high life, with his family, kept very busily at 
work, drove sharp bargains, and used his little capi- 
tal so wisely that he became rich. He moved into 
a splendid house, bought expensive equipage, put 
on airs, and, though high life turned up its nose 



192 High Life and Low Life. 

a little superciliously at first, it brought it down, 
and dipped it in Mr. Jones's wine, and then opened 
its drawing-rooms to Mr. Jones and his family. Mr. 
Jones bought his place in society, and a share in 
conventional high life, as he Avould buy a box in a 
theatre, or a share of railway-stock. Even this is 
better than the pursuit of wealth for the sake of 
wealth — better than piling up money for the sake of 
counting it, or to see how large a pile can be made 
one's own. Wealth, as the servant of high life, is 
good ; but wealth as the end of life, or as the basis of 
any life, whether nominally high or low, is bad. 

But these are commonplaces, and the argument 
needs to be pursued no further. I have attempted to 
define natural and necessary distinctions between that 
which is true and false in life — between that wliich is 
high and low. I have tried to show you that the char- 
acter of life is determined by its pursuits, pleasures, and 
motives. It has been a plain task — so plain and so 
obvious in every statement, and so trite, withal, that 
it must have seemed to many of you like the recitation 
of a school-room. Yet you know, as well as I, that 
the propositions I have made, though accepted by the 
judgment, are practically rejected by the life, of society. 

Who are those, generally, in society, whom society 
itself regards as enviable, — as, indeed, representatives 
of the highest life of society ? Are they the men of 



High Life and Low Life. 193 

intellect, the men of accomplishments, the men of pure 
morals and pure motives, the Christian men ; or are they 
the men of wealth, or the occupants of place ? Who 
are those who give to society its shape — who pull down 
one and set up another ? Who arrogate to themselves 
the distinctions and the prerogatives of high life ? I 
answer, the men of power and the men of money. It 
matters not what their pursuits are ; it matters not 
what their pleasures are ; it matters not what their mo- 
tives are — whether a love of power, or distinction, or 
money : they claim, receive, and hold the highest place. 
Low life rides and high life walks. Low life assumes 
the leadership, and high life modestly, though with 
many inward protests, acquiesces. Low life throngs 
the market-places, throngs the watering-places, throngs 
political conventions, throngs the halls of legislation, 
throngs all the fashionable assemblies. It has a low 
and vulgar desire to be seen of men, while high life is 
modest, and shrinks from contact with so much that is 
meretricious and base. The animal is rampant and reg- 
nant, and the angel hangs his head and folds his wings. 
Can we not build better than this ? Shall not 
Christian manhood and Christian womanhood have 
and hold their place ? Shall social and individual 
values forever depend upon material conditions ? My 
friend, if you are a man of brains, a man of culture, a 
man of taste, a man of pure and true life, a man acting 
9 



194 



High Life and Low Life. 



and living under the impulsion of high motives, bow no 
more to false gods. Demand that a man shall be a man 
before he shall be your associate. Do what you can to 
establish juster social values, so that a man shall stand 
for a man, however poor and humble he may be, and a 
brute shall pass for a brute, however proud and high. 
Do what you can to make high life possible to all, and 
to bring the low life of the world to do it homage. 



THE NATIONAL HEAET. 



IT has always been the folly of the wise to under- 
value the wisdom of the common people. The 
lawyer despises the jury that he natters, and the poli- 
tician shows, in the tricks by which he endeavors to 
deceive and mislead the people, the contempt he feels 
for those whom he affects to honor. All the orators 
have then* little compliment for the people — for what 
they call " the hardy yeomanry," " the intelligent 
masses," &c. The matter has really become conven- 
tional, and the compliment is tossed out as a gallant 
tosses a pleasant word to a pretty woman, partly be- 
cause it is his habit, and partly because she expects it. 

It was the very wise and brilliant Carlyle who 
accused the British nation of being mostly fools ; yet 
it must be admitted that, for a nation of fools, it has 
got on remarkably well. Somehow, British commerce, 
British manufactures, British agriculture, British pow- 
er, British wealth, British charities, and British litera- 



196 The National Heart. 

ture, suggest magnificent national acquisitions, resour- 
ces, and characteristics. 

An old-fashioned New England town will give us, 
perhaps, as good an illustration of the wisdom of the 
common people as we can find. I presume that there 
cannot be found elsewhere, upon the earth, communi- 
ties so well regulated, so pure, so equal and just in all 
departments of municipal administration, as among 
some of the older and humbler towns of New Eng- 
land. Once a year they assemble in town-meeting. 
They are usually fortunate enough to possess one man 
who understands parliamentary usage, and who pre- 
sides, year after year, as moderator. They vote their 
appropriations, elect their town-clerk, selectmen, and 
school-committee — their road-surveyors, fence -viewers, 
pound-keepers, and hog-reeves — and go home. Among 
the thousand persons, more or less, who live in the 
town, there is not one pauper, not one man or woman, 
or child over six years of age, who cannot read ; not 
one drunkard, not one place where a drunkard can be 
made, and not a man except the minister and the phy- 
sician who has had anything more than a common- 
school education. Are these men fools, or wise ? 
How much would their condition be improved, think 
you, by the importation of brilliant men who would 
despise their simplicity ? 

But we can find illustrations of popular wisdom in 



The National Heart. 197 

more important assemblies than New England town- 
meetings. My impression is that State legislatures 
have not been remarkable, either in New England or 
elsewhere, for the native gifts or the learning of their 
members. Indeed, it has been more than intimated to 
me that the majority of those who find places there are 
not so dazzlingly brilliant that they cannot be regarded 
safely by the naked eye. The boy who emigrated to 
the "West, and wrote back to his father, inviting him 
to follow, persuading him thereto by the assurance that 
" mighty small men get office out there," evidently did 
not understand the composition of Eastern legislatures 
as well as his father did. Yet, without learning and 
without experience, these' men come together, and 
legislate for the States composing this Union ; and 
it must be confessed — nay, it may be proudly claimed 
— that, in the main, they do it well ; that, when left to 
their own good sense and conscience, they do it always 
well. Under the laws enacted by these men, we have 
liberty, protection, and prosperity ; and we shall find 
the reason for this as we advance further in our discus- 
sion. 

It must be apparent to all, that, in the national life, 
there are certain men, institutions, agencies, and move- 
ments, which monopolize the popular attention, and 
which alone find record upon the page of history. 
Great men, political institutions, administrations, par 



19 



The National Heart 



ties, wars, intrigues of politicians, theories and policies 
of government — these occupy the surface of the na- 
tional life ; these are what men see and talk about ; 
these produce material for the newspapers ; these fur- 
nish the staple from which the historian weaves his 
varied record. In the issue of a war, in the result of 
a political campaign, in the success of a man, in the tri- 
umph of a policy, in the progress of an institution, it 
is our habit to recognize the results of independent 
agencies which produce the sum of national life and 
the stuff of history, and to lose sight of that grand 
vital power, abiding in the heart of the people, which 
hides itself by throwing to its surface these shows 
which cheat our attention. 

The child that stands upon the river-bank and sees 
a great steamer go by, sees only the long and graceful 
sweep of her decks, the revolution of her wheels, the 
rise and fall of her working-beam, the smoke pouring 
from her tall chimneys, her crowd of passengers, and 
the beautiful flag that floats over all. He does not 
dream of that heart of fire which throbs in her bosom, 
without whose mighty pulsations the boat would be 
only a mass of useless lumber. So, when we enter a 
garden, we only interest ourselves with that portion of 
it which occupies the sunlight and the air. Stems and 
foliage and flowers and fruits — these absorb our atten- 
tion j while the under-world of soils and roots and 



The National Heart. 199 

vital chemistries, in which all the secrets of the upper 
beauty hide, are unthought of. 

The heart of the people — the national heart — out 
of this are the issues of the national life. We talk oi 
institutions, and policies, and state-craft, and inter 
national reactions, and imagine that we are touching 
grand realities and vitalities ; and while we talk the 
national heart beats on and the national life flows on, 
and bears us all upon its tide. There is probably no 
man so unobserving as not to have noticed a certain 
drift of events, altogether independent of apparent 
forces, — a certain drift that the wisdom of the wisest 
cannot account for — a drift that neither statesmen nor 
politicians can divert or arrest — for which, indeed, they 
are in no way responsible. Events march, or seem to 
march, in solid column, pricking each other forward 
with crowding spears ; and the men and the parties 
which pretend to marshal them, and which have a cer- 
tain show of marshaling them, only run with them, or 
run before them to avoid being crushed beneath their 
feet. Throughout the sad and terrible war which still 
engages the energies of this nation, there has been 
nothing more remarkable than this independent drift 
of events, baffling all attempts at prevision, breaking 
up all the schemes of the politicians, making folly to- 
day of the wisdom of yesterday, and showing how lit- 
tle the apparent actors in the great drama have had tc 



200 The National Heart. 

do with its inspiration, and the order of its combina- 
tions. I recognize here, reverently and gladly, the 
presidency of Providence over all our national affairs, 
and the power of Providence in them ; but I see, par- 
ticularly in this majestic drift of events, which so ruth- 
lessly overthrows policies and prophecies, and theories 
and men, the tide of the national life as it flows forth 
from the national heart. It has its birth among the 
aspirations, the convictions, the affections, and the faith 
of the American people. It is the product of no man's 
will. It is not even distinctively the product of the 
nation's will. It is the product of forces starting as 
independently of volition as the beating of the human 
heart itself; and these forces, like springs in the moun- 
tain-side, send out their contributions to create that 
resistless stream which bears the freight of history 
upon its bosom. 

I do not go to the heads of those who compose a 
New England town-meeting to find the secret of their 
wisdom, but to their hearts. They are right-hearted, 
and see clearly ; they are right-hearted, and act con- 
scientiously. They aim to do right, and have a com- 
mon interest in doing right ; and the life of the town 
is that which comes forth from the heart of the town, 
producing the natural results of peace, order, and pros- 
perity. I do not look for the wisdom of our State 
legislatures among the brains of the legislators. In 



The National Heart. 201 

the laws and statutes of a State, the learned minds and 
practised hauds*of a few have only put into form that 
which the heart of the majority has pronounced good. 
Mr. Bancroft, speaking of colonial Connecticut, saya 
that iC the magistrates were sometimes persons of no 
ordinary endowments, but, though gifts of learning and 
genius were valued, the State was content with virtue 
and single-mindedness ; and the public welfare never 
suffered at the hands of plain men." And what he 
says of Connecticut is true generally of all the States. 
Plain men, in responsible positions, act as they are 
moved to act by their hearts, and live in a close and 
fruitful communion with conscience. Sometimes, de- 
signing men may lead them away from the right, but 
they always come back to it with renewed loyalty. 

The present period of our national history is marked 
by such great events, by such antagonisms of opinion 
in high places, and by such prominence of individual 
men, that we are more than ever liable to forget the 
real source of the national life and power, and to judge 
shallowly and mistakenly of its developments and phe- 
nomena. We say, that if this or that policy shall be 
pursued, if this or that man succeed, if this or that 
party prevail, if some institution be saved or over- 
thrown, or a battle be lost or won, then shall we have 
unity, peace, and prosperity, or the opposite of these ; 
whereas, these are not dependent upon any man, or 



202 



The National Heart. 



institution, or policy, or party. They must come, and 
come to stay, as the product of permanent forces, start- 
ing in the national heart ; as the product of an inspir- 
ing, moving, governing, and conservative power, whose 
fountain-head is among those affections which are high- 
est and nearest heaven. Ambitious men, and interest- 
ed and selfish parties, and brute force, may for a time 
pervert the legitimate issues of this power; but it is 
certain, if it save itself from perversion, to overcome 
all these, and carry its quality into every act and event 
which goes to make up national history. 

I propose to speak a few words concerning the na 
tional heart, as the residence of those forces which 
move and conserve the national life. 

Every heart that is of value to itself and others is 
identified with a home. There is, somewhere, a group 
of hearts to which each heart belongs, or it has no 
strong hold upon the world — a group that is usually 
bound to a certain spot by all its interests and affec- 
tions. A boy grows up to manhood in a home, and, 
choosing to himself a companion, builds a new home 
for himself and for her. Children are born to him, 
and at length a home-circle is formed, made up of kin- 
dred hearts, and held together by natural affection. 
Looking into this home, we shall find that all its ambi- 
tions, aspirations, and industries, are inspired by this 
affection. The husband strives to give a worthy home 



The National Heart. 201 



lo the woman of his love, and the wife returns hia 
devotion with all love's sympathies and ministries, 
while both labor for the comfort, the education, and 
the prosperity of their children, who, themselves, ar 
helpful toward the general welfare. Love is the vita 
air on which this home lives — on which home as an 
institution lives. It is both motive and satisfaction — 
inspiration and reward. 

Now let each man before me measure, if he can, 
the influence of his home-affections upon his individual 
life. How much of any sort of effort do you put forth 
that . is not inspired, or suggested, or aided, by your 
love for the persons and the things that make up your 
home ? Where do you look for your sweetest satisfac- 
tions ? Where does your life centre ? Around what 
spot does your life revolve ? Ah ! when you lose home 
and that which home holds, do you not lose that which 
hallowed the name of country ? that which endowed 
Iho world with value ? Nay, do you not lose that 
which made you valuable to yourself? 

Well, a neighborhood is made up of homes, and, in 
the main, one home is. like another in its characteristic 
influence upon the individual life. A town or a coun- 
ty is made up of neighborhoods, and a State is com- 
posed of counties and towns, and a group of States 
constitutes the federal Union. So we come, by a very 
short path, as you see, to the conclusion that the nation 



204 The National Heart. 

is only a grand aggregation of homes, and that the 
mainspring of the national life is the love that inspires 
the home-life. A nation is a thing that lives and acts 
like a man, and men are the particles of which it is 
composed. If these particles obey the law of their 
home-life — each one pervaded and controlled by the 
power of home-affection — then it is easy to see that 
home-life enters very essentially into the constitution 
of the national life. We can understand, at least, that 
we are not to look for the staple of national life in cabi- 
nets or congresses, in armies or institutions. We can 
understand, at least, that in the homes of the nation — 
under the control of home-affections — the nation lives. 
We often wonder how it is that a nation whose 
government has made it responsible for great crimes 
can survive those crimes — how a nation debauched in 
public morals, and corrupted by the prevalence of per- 
sonal vice in high places, can live — why it does not fall 
into anarchy by the weight of its guilt pressing upon 
its rottenness. It is because the great national heart is 
not guilty, and because the national life is not in the 
government at all. No nation can be destroyed while 
it possesses a good home-life. My lawn cannot be 
spoiled so long as the grass is green, no matter how 
many trees may be prostrated — no matter how many 
flowers may be trampled under feet by unclean beasts. 
The essential life and beauty of the lawn are in the 



The National Heart. 205 

grass, and not in the trees, and not in the flowers, and 
not in any creature that passes over it ; and the life of 
a nation is not in political institutions, and not in politic 
cal parties, and not in political or great men, but in the 
love-inspired home-life of the people. 

Where this home-life thrives best, there patriotism 
— another offspring of the national heart — grows thrift- 
iest. The love of country is one of the purest and most 
powerful passions of the heart, and is the constant 
companion of the love of home. Indeed, country is 
home in the largest sense, and the nation is the great 
family of which all of us are members. Country is the 
home of home itself — the setting of the jewel which 
we wear next our hearts. We claim as kindred all 
who were born under our own sky, all who are loyal 
to the same government, all who share the same na- 
tional lot, and all who cheer the same flag ; and we 
love the land which gives them and us a common 
home. I say that this love of country and this na- 
tional affection are only love of home and love of family 
enlarged, and that these loves always live and thrive 
together, t The man who loves home best, and loves it 
most unselfishly, loves his country best. 

Patriotism is simple and trustful, like family affec- 
tion ; and its subordinate place in the ordinary life of 
the nation is seen in the fact that it rarely shows itself 
except in the national emergencies. When the coun* 



206 



The National Heart 



try is endangered, or insulted, or outraged, then we 
learn something of the strength and the universality 
of patriotism, and then we learn something of its inspir- 
ing and motive power in national action. In recent 
years, we have seen it rouse our slumbering nation to 
arms, and lift our startled and distracted people into 
harmony and unity in the national defence. Truth, 
presented to the intellect, and enforced with eloquence 
the divinest, would only have bred difference and dis- 
turbance, when the voice of that first hostile cannon, 
turned against the flag that floated over Fort Sumter, 
reached the national heart ; and the nation, casting off 
every fetter, stood up as one man, and called for ven- 
geance. This was at a time when there were fear and 
trembling in high places ; when treason had tainted all 
the governmental departments ; when there was neither 
army nor navy ; when statesmen, insomuch as they 
could see farther than other men, were in despair. It 
was at a time when popular apathy left no ground hard 
enough to build a policy upon. Ah ! how this wound 
of the national affections — this insult to the object of 
the nation's worship — this blow at its unsuspecting loy- 
alty — inspired its life, and shattered the bands by which 
it had been bound so long ! I know of nothing more 
sublime than this sudden waking of a nation through an 
outrage upon the object of its love ; and it will not be 
possible for the muse of History to measure its inspiring 



The National Heart. 207 

power in the great events which have followed. That 
can only be found recorded in blood on a thousand bat 
tie-fields, and in tears in a million of sacrificial homes. 

Love of country does not burn with so steady and 
so reliable a flame as love of home. It is not so con- 
stant a motive in the national life. In the absorption 
of home-pursuits, and the selfish struggle for gold and 
power and fame, the national heart forgets, or is prone 
to forget, its patriotic fervor, and to consent to the 
subordination of patriotic motives ; but when danger 
comes, there is nothing it will not dare and do to 
defend the object of its affections. Patriotism — inferior 
to Christianity as it is — has had a longer life than 
Christianity and a broader hold upon mankind, and 
numbers a hundred martyrs where Christianity can 
claim but one. And patriotism, let me insist, is not 
confined to the noble few. It is the commonwealth. 
I believe in the patriotism of the American people — the 
loyalty of the national heart. It may be tampered 
with and deceived and misled, but it lives as an irresist- 
ible motive-power in the national life. 

It is the habit of some over-charitable people to say 
that, in the present struggle between the loyal people 
of this country and those in rebellion, the latter are 
actuated by just as good motives as the former. This 
may be true to a very limited extent ; but it is noto- 
rious that the grand motive-power of the rebellion is 



208 The National Heart. 

hate ( and hate is not so good a motive as love, and, 
thank God ! it is not so powerful a motive as love. ^ I 
see arrayed on one side of this struggle those who hate 
democracy, who hate labor, who hate the idea of human 
equality, who hate their country and its constitution, 
who hate the political mother that bore them — the 
mother under whose fostering care they had lived in 
wealth, independence, and peace — and who, more than 
they hate democracy, and more than they hate free 
institutions, and more than they hate their country, 
hate the North and the universal Yankee. If you can 
find any love that operates as a motive of rebellion 
besides the love of power and the love of slavery, you 
will be more successful than I have been. 

It is patent that the motive-power of the rebellion 
is hate — hate, fostered and fed in every possible way. 
It breathes its foul breath through the rebel newspa- 
pers ; it finds utterance in every speech ; it comes forth 
with bitterest venom from the lips of women ; it pol- 
lutes and burns the hearts and tongues of even the lit- 
tle children. Extinguish the hatred that glows in the 
heart of the rebellion to-day, and you extinguish the 
rebellion itself. 

Now, can any sane man think of comparing this 
motive with that which has poured out for the national 
redemption its untold millions of treasure, and its hun« 
dred thousand lives ? Have the men whom we have sent 



The National Heart. 205 

to Southern camps and Southern battle-fields and South- 
ern graves been moved to enlist by feelings of enmity 
toward those against whom they went to fight ? Has 
there been a bitter hatred of the Southron in the 
Northern heart ? Has it not been notorious, not only 
here but abroad, that the loyal people of the country — 
especially those of the North — have carried no bitter- 
ness of feeling into this contest ? I telJ you that it was 
only because love of country was stronger than broth- 
erly sympathy, that the nation was not ruined years 
ago. Our troops will not, cannot, be bitter ; and I 
have no question that, if the armies of the rebellion 
should give up their cause to-day, our loyal forces could 
not be restrained from the expression of their fraternal 
feelings for them. We have fought for the country ; 
we have fought for the flag; and love has been the 
motive-power with us in all the contest ; and just as 
certain as God is stronger than all the powers of evil, 
and truth is stronger than falsehood, and virtue is 
stronger than vice, is love stronger than hate in any 
contest. One is supremely, everlastingly positive, 
allied to God and heaven ; the other is infernally nega- 
tive, born of hell and bound for it. 

There is still another motive-force in national life 
which claims our consideration, and this is religion. I 
am inclined to think that we undervalue the power of 
religion upon the heart of this nation. In saying this. 



210 The National Heart. 

I contemplate no narrow definition of religion, though 
I embrace in it, of course, all the forms of Christianity. 
Religion existed before Christianity, and of course can 
exist outside of Christianity. It may exist without any 
written revelation of God, flowing naturally and neces- 
sarily from the constitution of the human soul, and its 
rationally apprehended relations to the Father-Soul. 
We know there are multitudes of men and women who 
never enter a Christian church — who have no adequate 
Christian knowledge —who do not pretend to be Chris- 
tians ; yet who, through the indirect teachings of Chris- 
tianity and the outworking of their religious natures, 
entertain the thought of a Supreme God within whose 
providential reign they come ; a God to whom they 
pray in times of peril, and to whom they owe a certain 
sort or degree of obedience. This religion may be 
shallow, and it doubtless is so. There may be very 
little of love in it— very little of worship in it — very 
little of comfort and joy in it ; but, shallow and love- 
less and joyless as it may be^ there is something in it 
which gives significance to the word duty. It recog- 
nizes and acknowledges certain duties, growing out of 
the relations sustained by man to man and men to God ; 
and this religion, shallow but broad, embraces a nation. 
It may be that the highest form it ever reaches is a 
simple sense of duty ; but this sense of duty is strong 
and universal. As I understand the word duty, it al- 



The National Heart. '211 

ways has direct or indirect reference to God and ever 
lasting good. We do that which is due from us to God 
— due from us to others — due from us to our country — • 
because God's constitution of things makes it due, and 
God's constitution of us makes us feel it to be so, and 
urges us to a practical acknowledgment of the fact. 

Now permit me to illustrate the peculiar power of 
this sense of duty, as a motive, from our recent nation- 
al history. I am aware that, like patriotism, it often 
sleeps in times of peace, but, when danger comes, it 
prings to its office with an energy that is really sub- 
lime. At the opening of the present war, when all 
the country was a camping-ground, and volunteers 
were rushing to rendezvous by tens and hundreds of 
thousands, there was one question w T hich nearly every 
man was called upon to answer; and that question re- 
ceived but one reply — " What induced you to enlist ? " 
This question, put to rude and rough men by sympa- 
thetic friends and visitors — put to men who were often 
profane and intemperate — put to men who had never 
been moved to do a heroic deed before — put to the 
simple-hearted boy from the farm, and the delicate- 
handed clerk from the counting-room — elicited but this 
response : " Somebody must go." It was not the love 
of home entirely that made this " must go," for many 
of them had no home that they loved, or that loved 
them. It was not patriotism alone, for many of these 



212 The National Heart. 

men had little that bound them to their country, and 
feeble interest in its prosperity and safety. This " must 
go " sprang from a sense of duty, and this sense of 
duty was born of that which was essentially religion. 
It was so imperative that it gave them no peace until 
the uniform was on and the march begun. Now this 
religion may not have been pure and powerful enough 
— may not have been intelligent enough — to produce in 
these men a good personal character, but, appealed to 
by this great emergency, it made this great and beau- 
tiful response. If there are any who doubt the essen- 
tially religious character of this response, they will, at 
least, admit that the nation's life was indebted to the 
nation's heart for it, and not to its intellect. 

" Somebody must go." Here was a full recognition 
of duty, and this recognition has placed two millions 
of men in fields of action which now hold five hundred 
thousand of them in the sleep that knows no waking. 
" Somebody must go." American, German, Irishman 
— Catholic and Protestant — all gave the same suggest- 
ive reply ; and in that sense of duty which dictated it 
lay the national safety. 

But it can be hardly necessary to illustrate the 
power of religion in national life in a country whose 
origin and history are, themselves, the most striking 
illustrations of it. It was religion that directed the 
Puritans to Plymouth Rock. It was religion that in- 



The National Heart. 213 

spired and sustained them throughout their colonial 
struggle. Religion constituted so much of their life, 
that it really ordered the affairs of the State. It had 
been, in other countries, the habit of the State to take 
religion under its patronage, that it might be regulated 
and used for State purposes ; but here, religion was 
the dominant power, and the State was used for reli- 
gious purposes, as an instrument of the church. Reli- 
gion found its way into every statute, and every muni- 
cipal regulation, and every political institution. Before 
home-life was well established, and while yet the coun- 
try waited to be loved and to be made worthy of pa- 
triotic affection, religion was the ever-present, ever- 
prevalent motive. Ministers stood side by side in 
public honor with magistrates, and the people were 
governed by them in harmonious companionship. 

When, in critical moods, we look back upon those 
men and those times, we find much uncharitableness to 
condemn, much ignorance to lament, and much super- 
stition to pity ; but we know, after all, that the reigning 
motive of all that early life was the religion of Jesus 
Christ. It was this religion that crystallized into our 
political, educational, and charitable institutions. There 
is not a State constitution in this Union — there is not a 
college or a public school — that does not testify, direct- 
ly or indirectly, to the power of religion as the motive 
of the early life of the nation. 



214 The National Heart. 

And here permit me a single word on the subject 
of Puritanism, about whose malign influence in national 
affairs we hear so much in these latter days, from the 
lips of mountebanks and demagogues and traitors. Of 
what crimes does Puritanism stand convicted before 
the bar of History ? It persecuted Quakers and hung 
witches, and did both in the fear of God and for His 
glory — which, perhaps, was the most lamentable part 
of the matter. What else did Puritanism do ? It 
planted one of the most remarkable nations of the 
world in the wilderness. It gave that nation a love 
of freedom and justice, a regard for the moral govern- 
ment of God, an open Bible and a free pen and tongue. 
It impregnated a continent with the democratic idea, 
and the continent has borne to it a great family of re- 
publics. It built the school-house by the side of the 
church, and the college among the school-houses, and 
educated, and taught the world how to educate, the 
common people. It governed social life by the rules 
of Christian propriety, and carried its religion into 
every sphere where religion has an office to perform. 
When the oppressor came to extort tribute, and crush 
the free spirit of the nation, it rose the first in rebel- 
lion ; and throughout the long years of the Revolution 
it poured out its blood like water for the national salva- 
tion. It sent from a single little State — the State that 
holds the everlasting rock on which it first planted its 



The National Heart. 215 

foot — eighty thousand men to the Revolutionary war ; 
and I stand here as the son of a Puritan, and of Pu- 
ritan New England, to declare with grateful pride that 
the triumph then achieved over the mother-country 
was not only a victory of the Puritans, but a victory 
of Puritan ideas. A belief in the right to life, liber- 
ty, and the pursuit of happiness — this is Puritanism. 
A belief that God rules in the affairs of men ; that man 
has a right to himself that cannot be bought and sold 
without sin ; that the golden rule is the best rule ; and 
that loyalty to freedom and a free government is lauda- 
ble, and that traitors ought to be hanged — this is Puri- 
tanism. 

And New England is to be left out in the cold for 
its Puritanism ! New England cold ! Why, the only 
way New England has kept comfortably cool for the 
last half century has been through her contact with 
other States, of great conducting power* Leave New 
England out, and she would come up to a white heat 
in twelve months. But you cannot leave New England 
out ; you cannot leave Puritanism out. New England 
is in ; Puritanism is in — mixed in ; and so long as they 
represent freedom, and pure morals, and patriotism, they 
will stay in. 

But it is not necessary to refer to the general 
religious sentiment of the nation, or to historical 
Puritanism, to learn that religion is a powerful mo- 



21G The National Heart. 

live in the national life. Its Christian spire rises wher- 
ever a hamlet gathers. The cities are crowded with its 
costly architecture, and into these churches gathers the 
best and most highly vitalized society of the nation. 
The Christian pulpit is the greatest moral lever of the 
age. It holds the highest culture of the country and 
the best intellect ; and its power cannot be measured. 

The love of home is strong, and the love of country 
is strong ; but the love of God is supreme, and fertilizes 
and vitalizes all other loves. Ah ! how little do the 
unthinking realize the power of the religion taught by 
a free Bible and a free pulpit in such a nation as this ! 
Think what it is to have twenty thousand men in 
twenty thousand pulpits, proclaiming every week to 
twenty thousand congregations, made up of the most 
influential society of the nation, the truths of the ever- 
lasting gospel ; preaching justice and purity and truth- 
fulness, and love and freedom and faith ; enforcing the 
claims of duty in all the departments of life ; giving 
constant recognition to the reality of a future existence, 
and drawing motives from it ; and exhorting to daily 
communion with Him who is the source of life and the 
spring of inspiration ! Can such a power as this be 
measured ? — a power with the highest spiritual forces 
in it — with God and eternity in it, and love as deep 
and broad as both ? Think what it is to have a thou- 
sand presses busy with the production of Bibles and 



The National Heart. 217 



religious newspapers and Christian books and tracts ! 
Think of twenty thousand Sunday-schools and a hun- 
dred thousand other schools in which prayer is offered 
daily and more or less religious instruction given, and 
of a hundred colleges, every one of which is in Chris- 
tian hands in the pursuit of Christian ends, and then 
you can only begin to get an idea of the power of reli- 
gion in our national life. 

I have thus tried to exhibit to you the fact that tbo 
heart is the motive-power in the national life, and that 
this life is essentially love and love's natural offspring 
— that in the love of home, and the love of country, and 
the love of God, the nation holds all the motive-forces 
of its being. The national heart is the birthplace of all 
generous national enthusiasms, all worthy aspirations, 
all noble heroisms, and through it everything divine in 
the national life is breathed. A government may exist 
without love in it, and it may rule a nation without love 
in it ; but no nation, can live, in itself, with the power 
of self-government, self-development, and self-preserva- 
tion, save as its life starts in, and is fed by, its heart. 

We are naturally desirous of the spread of republi- 
can institutions over the world ; but we may rest cer- 
tain that they will spread no faster than the hearts of 
the nations are prepared for them. The only reason 
why a republic cannot live in Rome and France is, that 
the hearts of those nations are not capable of creating 
10 



218 The National Heart. 

and sustaining a republic — that they are not under 
those motive-forces of love which produce a republic, 
or any form of self-organized national life. The heart 
of France, for instance, unless I greatly mistake it, does 
not possess that home-love, that patriotism, and that 
love of God, whose natural outgrowth and expression 
is republicanism. When the heart of France wins 
those possessions, the imperial crown will tumble, and 
France will become a republic without essay of arms, 
or effort of will. France is full, even to-day, of repub- 
lican theory. Nothing can be more radical than the 
doctrines of popular rights and self-government taught 
by some of the brightest and most influential minds of 
France. Indeed, the head of France has been republi- 
can for years ; but it takes something more than heads 
and hands to make and sustain a republic. Look at the 
old republic of Mexico, and see how it has died out at 
the heart. Its home-life had become poor, its patriot- 
ism had been narrowed down to partisanship, and its 
religion was in dead forms and dead churches, and not 
in the hearts of the people. When Mexico died as a 
republic, she died simply because her heart was dead, 
and because she could not exist longer as a republic. 
Venice died at the heart, and though events over 
which she had no control were busy with her destiny, 
they hardly hastened her fall. In the striking language 
of Mr. Ruskin : " By the inner burning of her own pas* 



The National Heart. 219 

sions, as fatal as the fiery rain of Gomorrah, she was 
consumed from her place among the nations ; and her 
ashes are choking the channels of the dead, salt sea." 

And here I am led naturally to speak of the national 
heart as the conservative power of the national life. 
You will see that my subject is a difficult one to divide 
— that is, it is difficult, with my view of the subject, to 
separate for consideration the motive and conservative 
forces of national life. The winds and tides that give 
ceaseless motion to the sea are also the conservative 
forces of the sea. Its constant sweetness is the prod- 
uct mainly of its constant motion. That vital force in 
the human body which gives it the power to act upon 
matter is the same force which preserves that body 
from decay. It is thus in national life. The heart is 
the motive-power, and it is also the conservative 
power, through identical channels of operation ; but 
the politics of the day give us our words, and we must 
see how much meaning there is in them. There is an 
idea that the conservative forces of our nation are en- 
tirely distinct from the motive forces, and we conse- 
quently hear of conservatism, and conservative influ- 
ences, and conservative men. There has been a feeling 
afloat that this nation is in great need of being saved 
by somebody, or something ; and there is a class of 
people who have written and talked and engaged in 
associated action with reference to an outside scheme 



220 



The National Heart. 



of salvation, under the name of conservatives. There 
are others that do not call themselves by this name, 
who look for the national preservation to powers that 
do not inhere in the national life. 

I think, for instance, that many of us have been 
looking throughout all this war for a great man — a 
great leader — bearing his patent of nobility and sign 
of authority on his forehead, and taking the national 
salvation into his own hands. I have not seen him : 
have you ? Why have we not seen him ? Because we 
did not. need him. We have seen good men, honest 
men, honorable men, who did their duty, and who were 
a fair expression of the national heart ; but the great, 
the commanding man, has not come, and would not be 
heeded if he had. Great men save feeble nations by 
harmonizing their will and concentrating their power ; 
but ours is not a feeble nation, its will is sufficiently 
harmonized, and its power is sufficiently concentrated. 
The nation is able to take care of itself, and has its con- 
servative power in the sources of its life. Still the call 
for a great man is kept up, and the newspapers have 
said "lo here," and " lo there;" and politicians have 
bruited several distinct discoveries of the genuine arti- 
cle ; but, to use the street-slang of the day, the people 
" don't see it." They have no special anxiety to see it. 
They are on the right track, and know what they want. 
They need only honest and efficient men to execute 



The National Heart. 221 

their will. Are we willing, at this date of our national 
life, to trust ourselves in the hands of a great man — to 
be led by him — to be moulded by him — to be saved by 
him, in his way ? Are we become so w T eak, so igno- 
rant, so degraded, as to be looking for a great man to 
save us ? God forbid ! and God forbid (I speak it rev- 
erently and earnestly) that any great man rise to take 
the nation's work out of the nation's hands ! 

There are some, I suppose, who are honest in the 
belief that the nation is to be saved by party politics. 
We judge thus by the resolutions passed at their con- 
ventions, and by the tenor of their speeches and their 
newspapers. We hear not unfrequently of assemblies 
of leading politicians in Washington or New York, 
which seem to be devoted to the business of saving 
the nation — in their way. One would imagine, from 
the airs they put on, that the life of the nation w T as in 
their hands, or that it had no life independent of party 
politics. We have a great crisis, as you know, on the 
occasion of every national election, in which the na- 
tional salvation is understood to depend on the triumph 
of — all parties. First and last all parties have succeeded, 
and first and last all parties have been defeated, and 
still the nation lives ; and it has manifested more genu- 
ine vitality, with a third of its subjects in rebellion, 
than it ever did while all were united. 

The idea of putting a living, intelligent, powerful 



222 The National Heart. 

nation into the keeping — into the conservative embrace 
— of a few lean party men, the majority of whom are 
working for power or for pay, is just as ridiculous as 
the thought of a great army — whose salvation is in 
itself, if it is anywhere — consenting to be led by a 
band of camp-followers and sutlers who had volun- 
teered to save it from destruction. 

No nation ever conserved its life by or through a 
policy. A policy may modify the issues of national 
life somewhat, and have a reactionary effect upon the 
life itself; but a mere policy has no life in it, to bestow 
upon anything. Most nations live — indeed, most na- 
tions always have lived — in spite of the policy imposed 
upon them. A national policy is only a way of na- 
tional living. The life of a stream does not depend 
upon the way of its flowing. It may be turned by arti- 
ficial means out of its old channel, and then turned 
back again, and then diverted into other channels ; but 
these changes do not diminish the volume of the 
stream, nor hinder it a day from finding the ocean to 
which it tends. So a party policy may change the 
direction of a nation's life, and modify for a time its 
minor issues ; but it has no power to save that life — < 
no conservative power. The nation carries its salva- 
tion hi its own strong heart, and not in the pocket of 
any party. 

I do not pretend that one policy is as good as an- 



The National Heart. 



223 



other, or offer the opinion that it makes no difference 
what party manages the government : on the con 
trary, I think that the mode of national life is of very 
great importance. I simply hold that it is not of vital 
importance. So far is the nation from having its life 
in a party, or a policy, that all parties and policies have 
their life in the nation. 

All parties pretend to conservatism, in one way or 
another — conservatism as they understand it ; and we 
find in them all, and sometimes outside of them all, a 
class of men who profess to be distinctively conserva- 
tive. Exactly what they mean by conservatism does 
not appear, but — they — are — well, they are conserva- 
tive. They are general dissenters, protestants, fault- 
finders, critics. Many of them are bankrupt politi- 
cians ; some have very stiff backs and very sore heads ; 
some have very supple backs and very soft heads ; most 
of them, for some private reason, don't believe in party 
politics at all, but would like to belong to a party 
which is not a party, with politics which are. not poli- 
tics. They usually dine satisfactorily, wear good 
clothes, and have a little something invested in stocks. 
They are in favor of things as they are, with one or 
two trifling exceptions. They would like to have all 
radicals and reformers hanged. They cherish an abid- 
ing affection for every good, old-fashioned, comfortable, 
respectable wrong, and can have no patience with those 



, 



224 The National Heart. 

who are bent on disturbing it. I may have been pecu 
liarly unfortunate in my field of observation, but I have 
never known an out-and-out, genuine conservative to be 
on the humane side of anything ; and, to-day, he is no- 
toriously bent on saving that which alone brings the 
nation into danger — saving that which, for its hideous 
crimes against humanity, against liberty, against the 
peace and dignity of this nation, against the loyal and 
patriotic blood of the American people, ought to be 
destroyed. His peculiar affection for the Constitution 
of his country seems to be inspired mainly by the 
clause which protects those who have spit upon that 
Constitution, and trampled it under their feet. 

This sort of conservatism would save the patient by 
saving the ulcer that gnaws his flesh ; would save the 
ship by saving the barnacles that hinder her way 
through the water and drag her downward ; would 
save the tree by saving the caterpillars. that consume 
its foliage. It believes that ulcers are angels, and bar- 
nacles blessings, and that caterpillars have a constitu- 
tional right to be nuisances. It distrusts — nay, it does 
not recognize at all — the pow T er of a living nation to 
rid itself of wrongs by the natural outgoings of its life. 
It stands still amid the sweep and swirl of the national 
life like an old stump in a western river, with its feet 
stuck in the mud — a lodging-place for political drift- 
wood — while the steadily on-going national life slips 



The National Heart. 



221 



under and around it without paying it the compliment 
of a ripple or an eddy. 

There are many who believe in the conservative 
power of education. Many have, indeed, come to a 
settled opinion that the public-school system of the 
North and the universal newspaper are the real safe- 
guards of the national life. I think this matter is not 
properly understood. Education may or may not be 
conservative in its influence. It is conservative or des- 
tructive according to circumstances. When the cul- 
ture of the heart keeps pace with the culture of the 
head, and both are educated together, education be- 
comes a conservative power ; but when the intellect 
alone is developed, and the heart is permitted to lie 
dead or to become corrupted, education simply sharp- 
ens a knife for the nation's throat. Education certainly 
adds something to national life, but conservative power 
resides in quality, not quantity. It is the sugar that 
preserves the fruit and not the fruit that preserves the 
sugar. Educate the intellect of the common people — 
educate everybody ; only remember that conservative 
power resides in quality and not in quantity. The 
legitimate relation between the development of the 
heart and the brain must be constantly preserved, or 
education will breed national corruption by a law of 
nature which cannot possibly be evaded. 

I have thus attempted to present to you the great 
10* 



226 The National Heart. 



fact that national life does not abide in the govern- 
ment, does not abide in political institutions, does not 
abide in political parties or political men — that its 
source is the national heart. I have endeavored to 
show you that in the love of home, the love of country, 
and the love of God, lies the grand secret of the na- 
tion's vitality — lies that which is distinctively a nation's 
life — this nation's life. If the government were over- 
thrown, the nation would live ; if its political institu- 
tions were destroyed to-day, it would form new ones 
to morrow, and better ones ; if its political parties and 
its party men were annihilated, it would only be the 
stronger for the loss. These are only accidents and 
outgrowths of national life ; but if the love of home 
and country and God should be destroyed, the nation 
would at once cease to be an organized, living thing. 
These loves which inform the national heart are the 
fountain-head of all motive that has life in it, and of all 
conservative power. I have endeavored to exhibit to 
you this nation as a creature of the heart — as having in 
itself, by virtue of its origin and constitution, an inde- 
pendent life. The government is only its instrument ; 
institutions are only its drapery, or property, or ma- 
chinery ; parties are only its parasites ; and great 
men only its agents or ornaments. Private and 
public errors — private and public vices — these are 
diseases, these are agents of death ; but so long as 



The National Heart. 227 

the vital fountain remains strong and full, the nation ia 
safe, 

I have entertained two purposes in this discussion. 
The first is, to show that whenever disease attacks the 
national life, all remedial agents that have reference to 
a permanent cure should be addressed to the heart. 
This nation has been, and still is, sick. Treason is a 
symptom. Sympathy with treason is a symptom. In- 
surrection is a symptom. Corruption in high places is 
a symptom. Loveless, selfish, godless politicians are a 
symptom. I tell you that this nation cannot get thor- 
oughly well, until the national heart shall have been 
made pure enough and unselfish enough to control 
these symptoms, and expel the diseases which give 
them birth. By feeding the domestic affections, by the 
stimulation and development of patriotism, and, above 
all, by the cultivation of Christian grace and a sense of 
responsibility to God, is the nation to be cured of its 
disease. Policies, politics, men, administrations — these 
are nothing : all nostrums addressed to mere symptoms 
can be nothing better than momentary in their effect. 
Deepen and purify the national heart, and treason and 
rebellion and corruption and selfish politics will be 
sloughed off by the power of a better blood. It is 
simply a question of power between the motive and 
conservative forces of the national life, and the paraly 
zing and destructive forces. 



228 



The National Heart. 



Ah ! how well the great physician who has this na- 
tion in his care understands its case ! His treatment 
has indeed been heroic, but it has been wholesome. 
Is not home more precious to us than it was before this 
war began ? Do we not hold every domestic joy at a 
higher value ? Is not our love of country strengthened 
and purified since this war began ? Has not the na- 
tional flag a new significance, and a new power of 
inspiration ? Is not our patriotism deeper and broader 
and better ? Is not the piety of the national heart 
purified and strengthened also?, I declare my belief 
that there has not been a time within the last half cen- 
tury when, as a nation, we have been so willing to ac- 
knowledge the sovereign sway of the King of kings, 
so ready to see His hand in all chastisement and in all 
success, and so earnest to seek His favor and do His 
will, as now. These loves that are our life have been 
fed by the nation's blood, the nation's tears, and the 
nation's treasures, until the nation's vital forces are 
greater than ever before in its history. 

The second purpose of my discussion is to exhibit 
to you the true and only ground of hope for the future. 
Ever since this war was commenced there have been 
croakers in every community declaring more or less 
boldly that the nation is dead ; that all the blood that 
has been shed, and all the treasure that has been ex- 
pended, have been wasted, and that anarchy and general 



The National Heart. 229 

wreck lie before us. I tell you that, with the develop, 
ment of the national heart that has taken place since 
the war commenced, the nation cannot die. That ques- 
tion is settled ; «nd neither rebellion at home nor inter- 
ference from abroad can unsettle it. It is beyond all 
the contingencies of war and treason and intrigue 
The government itself is safe from wreck at this mo- 
ment, not through any power of its own, but through 
the power of the people under an impulse of the na- 
tional heart. At the opening of the rebellion, the gov- 
ernment was as powerless to save itself as if it had 
been no more than the corporation of the city of Wash- 
ington ; and when the heart of the nation could not 
push its blood through Baltimore, it pushed it around 
Baltimore, to save the national brain from syncope. 
And this is exactly my point. It is the national life 
that upholds and moulds and controls the government. 
The government is only the coronet upon the nation's 
brow. The nation is king, and the crown moves only 
as the king moves, and shines only when the king lifts 
it high into the light. 

I suppose there may be eyes in Europe, greedy 
with the lust of dominion, that are looking toward our 
shores for new fields of conquest ; but if any power 
should ever undertake to swallow this nation, it would 
find itsell in possession of a most indigestible morsel. 
A living nation, capable of self-government, cannot be 



230 



The National Heart. 



digested by a nation so dead that it consents to be 
governed by a despot. Even demoralized Poland, 
with her comparatively low grade of vitality, lies very 
hard upon the stomach of Russia. Hungary is a con- 
stant disturber of the spleen of Austria, and refuses to 
be digested. Little Switzerland — living Switzerland — 
with her two and a half millions, sits among her moun- 
tain-homes smiling, over the immunity she enjoys from 
the rapacious maws of the great nations around her. 
If Switzerland could have been digested, none of the 
considerations to which her safety has been so often 
attributed would have saved her from being swallowed 
long ago. But Switzerland is alive at the heart, and. 
cannot be killed at the heart, so as to be digested. 
The American nation is alive at the heart, and could 
not be killed by a foreign war a hundred years long. 

And now, as a final result of our discussion, we 
may learn why it is that this nation has had, from the 
beginning of its history, such faith in itself. The faith 
in itself, which it manifested during those long, long 
years of the Revolution, filled all the European politi- 
cians with wonder. They could not realize the fact 
that these feeble colonies were already a nation, alive 
at the heart, and possessing the power of self-organiza- 
tion and self-government. The end taught them some- 
thing, but the lesson did not last. How constantly, 
during the present war, have European politicians 



The National Heart. 231 

failed to understand and measure us ! They prophe« 
sied early success to the rebellion, but the rebellion has 
not succeeded. They thought they foresaw an early 
exhaustion of means, but they have seen us prosecute 
the most gigantic war of the century without going to 
them for a dollar. Nay, they have seen their own 
capitalists eagerly buying the securities of our govern- 
ment out of the hands of our own people. They fore- 
told famine, but we have had plenty, not only for our- 
selves but for them ; universal bankruptcy, but we 
have all prospered ; anarchy, but we have had per- 
fect order, save in one or two instances when base 
European blood has disturbed it. They have won- 
dered that as a nation w r e did not despair — almost felt 
like quarrelling with us because we would not see and 
admit that we were ruined — have begged us for hu- 
manity's sake not to fight against fate. As if a living 
nation, any more than a living man, would consent to 
the amputation of a limb, so long as there was vitality 
enough in its heart to save it ! 

Ah ! this faith of the nation in itself ! It is grand 
— it is glorious. It is not in the power of this nation 
to despair. Its faith is not in its government, its insti- 
tutions, its politicians, or even in its armies. Its faith 
is in itself, and in God, and is a natural product of its 
life. It is born among the affections. It is a child of 
love; and while the love of home and country and 



232 The National Heart. 

heaven live, this faith will live, rising above all disas- 
ter, superior to all difficulty, and, like a winged angel, 
leading the nation to the grand consummations of per- 
petual peace, prosperity, and power. 



COST AND COMPENSATION". 



THE law of compensation, as it is generally held 
and expounded, is a law of circumstances. Over 
against every defect in a man's constitution, over 
against every flaw in his condition, over against every 
weakness in his character, there is set some compensat- 
ing excellence which rounds him into wholeness. Mr. 
Emerson, in his exposition of this law, declares that no 
man ever had a defect which was not made useful to 
him somewhere — a comfortable suggestion to that lim- 
ited number of fortunate persons who have defects ! 

In the general view of this law, man would seem to 
be not unlike those gum-elastic heads which amuse our 
children. A pressure on the cheeks is accompanied by 
a compensatory thickening of the lips. Bear down the 
bump of reverence, and up comes the bump of benevo- 
lence. Squeeze hard across the temples, and hold 
closely in the back of the head, and we have Sir Wal- 
ter Scott. There is compensation for every squeeze in 



234 Cost and Compensation. 

_, 

some new protrusion. The head assumes new forms 
and expressions, but it is never smaller. So, in this 
philosophy, a man may have any number of defects, 
but the measure of his manhood is not reduced by 
them. Indeed, his defects are the measure of his excel- 
lences. 

Now I do not propose to quarrel with this philoso- 
phy, which, I may say in passing, covers not only man 
in his constitution, but man in all his belongings ; for 
there is some truth, or half-truth, in it. It opens a 
field of observation and thought that will well repay 
exploration, though the only practical result that can 
be reached is contentment with the constitution of 
things and the allotments of life ; and this is not a 
mean prize. 

I propose to leave this aspect of the law, for one 
which has relation directly to life and its motive-forces. 
Cost is the father and compensation is the mother of 
progress ; and I propose to treat of them as they relate 
to the grand ends, enterprises, and activities of life. 

Exchange, for mutual benefit, is the basis of all 
trade — it is itself all legitimate trade. The man who 
does a day's work for me exchanges that work for my 
money, and we are mutually benefited. He would 
rather have my money than save his labor. I would 
rather have his labor than save my money. The story 
of the two Yankee boys who were shut up in a room 



Cost and Compensation. 235 

together, and made twenty-live cents a-piece swapping 
jack-knives before they came out, is entirely rational 
and probable. It is very likely that each found his 
advantage in his new possession. A merchant in 1115 - 
nois has wheat w T hich he exchanges with a New York 
jobber for hardware. The exchange is made at the 
market value, and is nominally an even one, but, in 
reality, each finds advantages in it, and each makes 
money by it. When the business of a nation is in a 
healthy condition, all men thrive through the means 
of exchanges of ^values that are nominally equal. 

As a rule of business intercourse, we pay for what 
we get, dollar for dollar, and pound for pound. Every 
material good which man produces has its price, and 
can be procured for its price. Except this price be 
paid, it can only be procured by begging or stealing — 
through shame or sin. Everything costs something ; 
and most of the meannesses of the world are perpe- 
trated in various ingenious attempts to get something 
for nothing, or for an inadequate price. 

The history of a dollar has been written, I believe, 
and it would certainly be interesting to follow any dol- 
lar through the endless concatenation of exchanges, 
and see how it relieves and enriches every hand it 
touches. I pay a dollar, for instance, for a bushel of 
potatoes, and the green-grocer pays it to the gardener, 
who pays it, we will say, to the coal-dealer, who pays 



236 Cost and Compensation. 

it to the mining company, who pay it to the miner 
who pays it to the draper for a shirt, who pays it to 
the manufacturer, who pays it to the cotton-factor, who 
pays it to the Southern shipper, who pays it to the 
Southern planter, who pays it to his — no — I believe he 
doesn't. My illustration is not entirely happy, I see ; 
but, after all, it is the only one that will give me a 
stopping-place. Everything a man parts with is the 
cost of something. Everything he receives is the com- 
pensation for something. 

This, as between man and man, in all business inter- 
course whatsoever. Now between man and nature 
there is precisely the same relation. Man, as his own 
proprietor, understands it, and God understands it as the 
proprietor of nature. God has commissioned nature 
to pay for Everything that man does for her — imposed 
upon her this law, indeed, which she never disobeys. 
To man, He says by many voices : " I have given you 
all the air you can breathe, all the water you can use, 
and all the earth you can cultivate ; I have given you 
the ministry of the rain and the dew, and the light of 
the sun and moon and stars, and spread over you the 
beauty of the heavens ; I have given you brains to de- 
sign and muscles to labor. These are essentials— these 
are necessary capital for commencing life's business — 
these are common and free ; but if you want anything 
else — and you do want everything else — you must work 



Cost and Compensation. 23T 

for it — pay for it in labor or its equivalent. You are 
at liberty to exchange what you have worked for, for 
that which your neighbor has worked for, but, between 
you, you must work for what you get." 

And here is where we find the basis of all the values 
by which we regulate our exchanges. Labor — the ex- 
penditure of vital effort in some form — is the measure, 
nay, it is the maker, of values. A pearl will sell for just 
as much more than a potato as it will cost of human 
effort to obtain it. Gold is not so useful a metal as 
iron. Iron can be put to ten uses where gold can only 
be put to one ; but gold is ten thousand times as valu- 
able as iron, and mainly because it costs ten thousand 
times as much labor to obtain it from the earth. 

Expenditure — Compensation : these are the great 
motions of -the world. We are all the time pouring 
our life into the earth, and the earth is all the time 
pouring its life back into us. Her great storehouse 
of treasure is filled for those who will pay for it. 
Douglas Jerrold said that in Australia it is only neces- 
sary to tickle the earth with a hoe to make her laugh 
with a harvest. That I suppose is when she meets the 
first settler, and is particularly glad to see him ; but 
she soon gets over her extreme good nature, and insists 
on rigid business dealing. In New England she is 
severe, but she is true. There is not a spot of all her 
sterile soil that will not fairly compensate those who 



238 



Cost and Compensation. 



put their life into it. The meanest white-birch swamp 
only asks for drainage and tillage, and it will pay boun- 
tifully in bread. Culture, fertilization, exploration — 
these are the conditions upon which the earth yields up 
her treasures to man — and she never fails to pay back 
all that she receives. The trapper, in his pursuit of 
furs, travels far and wide, and exercises all his skill and 
cunning ; and he brings back that which pays him for 
his expenditure. The fisherman throws his net or his 
hook in all waters, and the sea faithfully rewards his 
quest. The gold-hunter digs into the side of the moun- 
tain, and, when he has probed far enough, he reaches 
the chamber where Nature sits behind her crystal coun- 
ter, and deals out the yellow ingots. The sweat of 
the human brow, wherever it falls, dissolves the bars 
by which nature holds her treasures from human hands. 
Thus we find in fellow-dealing, and in all our 
search for material good among the resources of 
nature, this law — that everything costs, and every- 
thing pays ; that if we make an intelligent expendi- 
ture, under essential conditions intelligently appre- 
hended and fulfilled, we receive full compensation 
in the kind of good which we seek. And this law 
is not a special one. It is universal, and throws its 
girdle around everything desirable to the human soul. 
We give and get, and only get by giving. All the 
good we win, we win by sacrifice. 



Cost and Compensation. 239 

There are certain essentials to the soul's life, as 
there are to the body's life, which God bestows in com- 
mon upon all the race — necessary spiritual capital on 
which to set up business. It is as if God had said : 
" I have given you love for your hearts, senses to yield 
you pleasure while they do you service, joy in living, as- 
pirations, ambitions, hopes ; but if you want anything 
more than these — -and you do want everything that 
you can appropriate in all my universe — you must pay 
for it by an expenditure of yourself or your possessions. 
If you want learning, you must work for it. If you 
desire to reproduce, or embody, that which is within 
you in any form of art, you must make great sacrifices 
for it. If you would make high acquisitions in spir- 
itual and moral excellence, you must pay, measure for 
measure, for all you obtain. There is not a single 
good in my realm — not yours in common with all your 
race — not embraced in your original capital — that can 
be secured without a sacrifice that corresponds to, and 
in some degree measures, its value ; and there is not a 
good in my realm that will not reward, and does not 
wait to reward, your expenditures." 

Now what are the treasures that a man holds in 
his hands, exchangeable for the better wealth ? 

First, Time. Our life is limited. The average life 
of men does not exceed forty years ; and threescore 
years and ten measure, except in rare instances, the 



240 Cost and Compensation. 

farthest limit of active life. This matter of time, as 
one of our articles of exchange, is a very important 
one. Under ordinary and prevalent circumstances, it 
is a pleasant thing to live, and, it being a pleasant thing 
to live, it is a pleasant thing to have leisure — that is, to 
have nothing which shall so occupy our time as to inter- 
fere with the simple enjoyment of living. When, there- 
fore, we are called out of our leisure into labor, we go, 
if our leisure is comfortable or happy, with a sense of 
real sacrifice. 

Again, time is of great value to us, because so much 
of it is required for those activities whose aim is the 
sustenance and protection of the bodily life. The 
amount of time required for the acquisition of the 
means of bodily subsistence is very great ; and to this 
must be added all that is necessary for bodily rest 
and refreshment. A man whose period of active life 
stretches on to fifty years — say from twenty to seventy 
— laboring ten hours a day, sleeping and resting and 
idling ten hours, and spending two hours in eating, 
dressing, bathing, &c., has just two hours left out of 
the twenty-four which are at his disposal. These 
amount to four years and a fraction in fifty, without 
reckoning the Sabbaths — but, as the average of active 
life is really not more than twenty-five years, and we are 
only after a general result, we will let the Sabbaths go ; 
and say that every man has four years of time, as a 



Cost and Compensation. 241 

treasure to be disposed of for whatever the soul may 
choose to purchase. 

Let us remember that we are making a liberal esti- 
mate. There are great multitudes of men- — aye, and 
women too — perhaps more women than men — who, 
even in an active life of fifty years, do not have two 
years of time at their disposal ; who work and eat and 
sleep throughout the whole period, and then die with 
absolutely no time with which to purchase that higher 
good for which they were made. It will be seen, 
therefore, that time, as one of our disposable treasures, 
is not- measured by the duration of life at all. Divide 
the number of years we live by ten, and the quotient 
will give us more than the average of time in our pos- 
session, for conversion into the higher grades of good. 

The second treasure which a man holds for ex- 
change is Vitality. " No man," says Peter Bayne, 
" has more than a certain force allotted him by nature. 
It may be greater or less ; but it is measured, and it 
cannot be expended twice." Every man, I suppose, 
arrives at adult years with a definite stock of vital 
power on hand. Before he dies, that stock is all to be 
expended. It may all be expended in bodily labor, or 
a portion of it only. It may be expended in a struggle 
against disease. It may be expended in the illicit 
gratification of the senses. It may be wasted in the 
digestion of unnecessary food. Or, it may be expend- 
11 



242 



Cost and Compensation. 



ed mainly in the acquisition of intellectual, moral, aid 
spiritual wealth. Like time, much of it must be used 
in obtaining food and clothing and shelter for the body; 
but there is a remnant left to be applied by the power 
of the will to the purchase of that good which is the 
highest wealth of life and character. 

The third treasure is Ease. Beyond the simple 
pleasure of living, and beyond the passive reception 
of pleasure through the senses, ease is, and always has 
been, regarded as a treasure. Men often work through 
many weary years to obtain it. Labor is not a thing 
which men love for itself. Men love that which pleas- 
antly engages the activities of body and mind ; but 
that is essentially play. Work is something which 
both body and mind are driven to. The will is obliged 
to apply its determining and motive power, before 
either body or mind will undertake that which is essen- 
tially a task. To many men, of fine powers, the ease 
of those powers is the most grateful and precious of all 
their treasures, and the one which they are the most 
unwilling to sacrifice for the higher good which only 
ts surrender can win. The fairest picture of heaven 
itself, to some souls, is that which represents it as the 
home of ease. But this treasure must go with the 
others, as a part of the price of spiritual *»nd all supe- 
rior good. 

There is another treasure, harder than all the rest 



Cost and Compensation. 243 

to surrender, without which the whole payment is 
vitiated ; and this is the Will, with all its self-love and 
pride. There is nothing more precious to a man than 
his will ; there is nothing which he relinquishes with 
so much reluctance. The natural desire of every man 
is to follow the dictates of his own will, unhindered. 
Obedience is not easy, until it is adopted as the rule of 
life. If we had no authority but human experience, it 
would be safe to say that an obedient and childlike 
spirit is absolutely essential, not only to the acquisition 
but to the reception of the highest good. A man must 
come under the laws of his being, and bow to the laws 
and conditions of all being — he must place his own 
will in harmony with the Supreme will — before it will 
be possible for him even to receive the highest good 
God has to bestow. 

I might enumerate other treasures which every man 
holds for exchange, but you see the drift of the argu- 
ment, and can fill out the inventory. 

These, then, are our treasures — our stock ; and 
now let us examine some of the ways by which, as 
individuals, communities, and nations, men win com- 
pensation for their expenditures. 

And first, let me state the proposition which I hope 
with some degree of clearness to illustrate in this lec- 
ture, viz., that no expenditure of the treasures I have 
enumerated can ever be made, with earnest truthful 



244 Cost and Compensation. 

ness of purpose, without securing compensation in some 
form, at some time. Let us understand that there arc 
oefore every one of us two hoards of treasure — one 
held by God, the other by man — mutually exchange- 
able, and that this law of exchange, or this law of com- 
pensation for expenditure, is instituted from eternity, 
and has no suspension and no flaw. Let me present 
this treasure which God holds for us under the figure 
of a massive golden vase, filled to the brim with water 
— a vase that can neither be dipped from nor drawn 
from, but that overflows to the hand that drops its 
treasure into it — overflows to that hand always, and 
overflows to no other hand. 

In our consideration of this subject, we shall find 
that cost and compensation are of two kinds ; that they 
are separable into two departments, each governed by 
independent laws. In one, compensation is directly 
sought, for personal advantage. In the other, moved 
by the power of love, we expend our treasure without 
hope of personal advantage, and receive it without the 
seeking. The instinct of infancy is to grasp and appro- 
priate something to build itself up with. It blindly 
reaches out toward everything its senses apprehend, 
and fixes its grapple upon evil as greedily a? upon 
good. This impulse, directed with increasing intelli- 
gence, follows us throughout the infancy of our being. 
We work for a direct reward. The hardest trial we 



Cost and Compensation. 245 

have, in the education of children, is to induce them to 
study when they are unable to see and appreciate the 
reward which that study will secure. Daily practice 
of the scales upon a musical instrument, drill in the 
rudiments of a foreign language — these are tasks which 
a child tires of, because it does not distinctly appre- 
hend, or does not value, their reward. Set the child 
to learning a tune, or trying a bit of translation, and 
the reward for work is so near, and so distinctly ap- 
prehended, and so much valued, that it labors with 
efficiency and enthusiasm. 

Grown-up children betray the same characteristic, 
and it is not to be found fault with. It is the ordina- 
tion of nature that we shall be something before we 
can do something — that we shall win something before 
we can have anything to bestow. We are to be fed, 
developed, endowed, before we are fitted for ministry ; 
and we must seek directly for those rewards which 
give us food, development, and endowment. 

The second motive of action proceeds from within 
rather than from without. The personal reward is un- 
sought for, but it never fails. When a man moves 
under the law of love, he is unselfish, and loses al) 
thought of reward. He has ceased for the time to 
appropriate, and becomes a dispenser. His life is 
voluntarily transformed into a channel through which 
the divine beneficence flows into the world. That 



246 Cost and Compensation. 

which he has won of the higher good becomes gen- 
erative, and makes manifestation. Bat here, as else- 
where, he must expend his private treasures ; and for 
this, expenditure there is always payment. He must 
expend time, ease and vitality, and money, perhaps- 
one of the forms in which all these treasures are pre- 
served. Does the meadow that bears one of God's 
broad rivers on its bosom get no reward from the 
river ? By bearing the burden of the hills, it is 
greener than they. Any man who becomes the chan- 
nel of a divine good, sucks into his own being the 
juices of that good. Indeed, the reward for unselfish 
service is better than any other, because the quality of 
the sacrifice is finer. 

And here let me say that there is no such thing in 
the world — that there never was, and never can be, 
any such thing in the world — as charity — something 
given for nothing. There may be abundant charity in 
the motive — that is, sacrifice may be made from mo- 
tives of love, or pity, or sympathy, or mercy, without 
wish or expectation of reward ; but this expenditure is 
subject to the highest grade of compensation. There 
is no letting up of this law for any motive. Expend, 
and the compensation comes. One motive is the com- 
plement and resolution of the other. They fly wing- 
and-wing throughout the universe. The operation of 
the law i? lire that of those Oid countrr -wells ^hLl? 



Cost and Compensation. 24T 

we knew in our childhood. While we empty one of 
their two buckets, the other is filling : it is impossible 
that one should be emptied without the other being 
filled, and equally impossible that one should be filled 
without the other being emptied. 

In the first of these two departments of compensa- 
tion we need to linger but a moment. Precisely as we 
dig in the ground for gold, or wash the sand for gems, 
or sound the sea for pearls — precisely as we cultivate 
the field to obtain those fruits which feed us, or ope- 
rate the mill to make those fabrics which clothe us, do 
we seek for that higher good which supplies and en- 
dows our higher life. The recorded wisdom of the 
world is in our libraries ; the truth of God is in our 
Bibles. We know just where labor will win, moment 
by moment, full compensation. We know what sacri- 
fices will win wisdom, learning, culture. We know 
what we must give of time, ease, and vitality, for every 
excellence in art. We know how much of sensual 
pleasure and how much of will we must relinquish to 
acquire spiritual elevation and purity ; and we know 
that, in all these cases, these sacrifices will procure the 
exact measure of compensation which we seek. We 
know, furthermore, that there is not a power or posses- 
sion with which we seek to endow ourselves, which is 
to be procured in any way but by these specific sacri- 
fices. It is said that there is no royal road to learning.. 



248 Cost and Compensation. 

It may be said with equal truth that there is no royal 
road to anything desirable. Genius enjoys no immu- 
nities. The bird flies faster than the fox runs ; but the 
bird must use its wings or the fox will catch it. God 
gives us arms and hands, but he does not give us 
strength and dexterity. These have a price, and 
we must work with our hands and work with our 
arms, or we cannot have strength and dexterity. He 
gives us brains, but he does not give us learning, or 
wisdom, or power of easy expression, or strength and 
skill in intellectual labor. All these must be purchased, 
and all these are a sufficient reward for what we give 
for them. 

We turn to the other department, and find our most 
direct way to its illustration through an appeal to uni- 
versal human experience. We find no statistics ready 
for us. No. careful plodder has ever been over the 
ground, and collected the facts which show that for 
every unselfish deed of good the doer has received a 
grand reward ; and The Master keeps no accounts that 
are open to our inspection. Every man, however, who 
hears me will testify to this : that he never fed a beg 
gar, or ministered to a helpless or suffering fellow- 
man, or made a sacrifice for the public good, without a 
return which more than paid hiui for his expenditure. 

It is not necessary that I should point out the modes 
in which good comes to a man, as a compensation for 



Cost and Compensation. 249 

unselfish sacrifice. It is enough for me to say that no 
man ever made this sacrifice without feeling abundantly 
paid for it. 

Still, let us illustrate the point. I choose for this 
purpose true marriage and happy maternity. In the 
surrender of her name, her destiny, her life, herself, to 
her husband, a woman realizes the reception of a bless- 
ing greater than she believes it in her power to bestow ; 
for true love is always humble in the presence of its 
object. This surrender is entire, and glad as it is 
entire ; and the moment it is made, she finds that 
she is worth more to herself, as the possession of an- 
other, than she was when she was her own. And this 
wife becoming a mother, gives her life to her children. 
The freshness fades from her brow, the roses fall from 
her cheeks, the violets in her eyes drop their dew, and 
her frame loses its elasticity ; but in these children and 
their precious love, she has a reward for every sacrifice, 
so great that sacrifice becomes a pleasant habit, and 
ministry the passion of her life. She expends, under 
the motive-power of love, all her treasures of time, 
ease, vitality, and will, and feels pouring back into her 
heart, through numberless unsuspected avenues, such 
largess of blessing as overflows her with a sense of 
grateful satisfaction. Does that Christian lover of his 
kind who spends his life in hospitals and prisons, in 
ministry to human need and human suffering, have 
11* 



250 



Cost and Compensation. 



smaller pay ? Has he who gives himself for his coun- 
try, even if he fall in the front of battle, meaner com- 
pensation ? Ask him, and hear his noble answer : " It 
is sweet and glorious to die for one's country." Does 
he who gives himself in service to the Great Master, 
even though he die the martyr's death of fire, have a 
smaller reward ? Love is one. It moves to one tune ; 
it works by one law ; it leads to one issue. 

And now I come to the consideration of this law 
of compensation as it relates to social communities. 
Society has material interests and treasures, and society 
is high or low, good or bad, progressive in culture and 
goodness or retrograde, refined or coarse, polite or 
vulgar, as it sacrifices these interests and treasures for 
social food and social wealth. When we reach the 
consideration of associated men, we come to institu- 
tions. Those who are Christians associate themselves 
together, and form a church. They build a house of 
worship, and engage the ministry of a preacher. They 
start a Sunday-school, and institute all the machinery 
necessary for securing the best Christian results. So- 
ciety establishes and supports schools for the educa- 
tion of the young of all classes, purchases libraries for 
the people, forms lecture associations, establishes insti- 
tutions for the relief of the poor, and institutes a multi- 
tude of agencies for the general good. 

Now, while there is a certain number of persons, 



Cost and Compensation. 251 



m all society, who must sacrifice time, ease, and vital- 
ity, directly, for the purpose of elevating its life, the 
great majority are called upon to sacrifice little more 
than money ; but money itself, as I have already inci- 
dentally stated, is an article in which time, ease, and 
vitality are embodied and hoarded. Some men inherit 
in money the hoarded fives of many men, and so have 
much power. Time, ease, and vitality are converted 
into money, so that a given amount of money repre- 
sents a day's labor. If my friend, who has a special 
gift for doing the work of society, spends a day in that 
work, he sacrifices no more than I do, who give, to for- 
ward his objects, as much money as he would earn in 
that time. Money is a grand, indispensable requisite 
for all the operations for social improvement. Churches 
and schools cannot be built and supported without 
money, and it is a beneficent ordination of Providence 
that the results of labor can be accumulated and em- 
bodied in a form so available for social purposes. 

There are three forms in which reward comes for 
all expenditures made for the higher interests of so- 
ciety. The first is material, and perfectly appreciable 
by minds actuated mainly by material motives. The 
Great Rewarder has provided a payment for. social 
sacrifices which the most selfish man can appreciate 
and appropriate. If a man makes a sacrifice for socie- 
ty, he can, with a common share of brains, see that he 



252 Cost and Compensation. 

gets his money back, so that he may regard his sacri- 
fice as an investment. 

Let us, for illustration, suppose the existence of a 
little city of ten thousand inhabitants, without a 
church, or a school-house, or a library, or a lyceum, or 
any institution of any kind for the moral, intellectual, 
and social culture of the people. Let us suppose this 
city to be rich in material good, and in facilities and 
opportunities for augmenting it. Would property be 
safe in such a city ? Would vice be under control 
there ? Would men be industrious there ? Would it 
possess the best elements of prosperity and security ? 
What things, in all the world, would add most to the 
value of real and personal property in such a city ? 
Would there be a man among its ten thousand — no 
matter how vile or mean his personal character might 
be — who could find a better investment for his money 
than by paying his share toward building five churches 
and ten school-houses, and endowing a public library 
and lyceum ? Such an investment as this would dou- 
ble the actual market value of all the property of the 
city. ISTo man there could afford to place his money at 
simple interest while such an investment waited to be 
made. Any man who permits institutions like these to 
go begging, in a city which contains his property, con- 
victs himself of business incompetency. All these insti- 
tutions bring with them a positive, money-producing 



Cost and Compensation. 253 

and money-preserving power. They are stimulants of 
industry, foes to all wasteful vices, bonds of harmony 
among jarring material interests ; nay, they are abso 
lute essentials to a safe, steady, and reliable prosperity. 
It is not necessary that a man should be benevolent to 
give money for the establishment and support of these 
institutions. It is simply necessary that he have the 
instincts and the foresight of an ordinary man of busi- 
ness. 

The second form in which reward comes for social 
sacrifice is higher and better than this ; and there are 
very few minds that cannot appreciate this, and even 
appropriate it. There are things in the world which 
cannot be eaten, or Worn, or handled, that have a 
money-value. When a man pays out half a dollar for 
a dinner, he buys that which he knows to be necessary 
to his life. A dinner is one of the things that he must 
have. When he pays out half a dollar for cigars, he 
pays for that which is not necessary to him, but which, 
through habit, has become so desirable, perhaps, that 
he really wins more satisfaction from his expenditure 
than he did from that which procured his dinner. 
Here, you see, is a money-value attached to a satisfac- 
tion which stands outside the pale of utility. If he 
pays half a dollar for the privilege of listening to a 
concert, he concedes that music, or the satisfaction it 
gives him, has an actual money-value. If he gives 



251 Cost and Compensation. 

half a dollar to hear a lecture, he declares by his act 
that the satisfaction, or inspiration, or instruction 
which the lecture yields him is worth half a dollar in 
money. If he pays a hundred dollars a year for the 
purpose of hearing a preacher, he recognizes a money- 
value in preaching, considered with direct reference to 
himself and his family. There is, then, an actual and 
well recognized money-value in the satisfactions and 
acquisitions which come to society immediately through 
its institutions. We pay out our money, and we get 
for it a kind of good which we cannot re-convert into 
money, but which we recognize as worth the money it 
costs us in the market. Indeed, the value which we 
attach to this good is measured by the dollars it costs 
far more than we are generally aware. We talk about 
free churches, and free schools, and free libraries ; but 
if these were all free — free as air, or water, everywhere 
— society would be impoverished by them. People do 
not prize a blessing which costs them nothing, nor 
care for an institution whose burdens they do not feel. 
If all these institutions, which do such service for so- 
ciety, should be placed where they would cost society 
nothing, they would die of inanition. 

I have thus discovered to you two distinct and 
independently competent rewards for all that is ex- 
pended in the establishment of social institutions. The 
first is a return in kind, of dollars and cents : a com- 



Cost and Compensation. 255 

munity is actually and demonstrably worth more money 
after having sacrificed generously for the ordinary insti- 
tutions of Christian society, than it was before. The 
second is a reward, in money-value, of the good which 
these institutions were established to secure, in their 
direct and immediate result : it is a reward which so- 
ciety feels that it is profited by accepting in place of its 
money. Yet there is a third reward, not much consid- 
ered in the expenditure, greater and better than these. 
Society, by intelligent sacrifice, not only wins a 
reward in material good and passing intellectual and 
spiritual satisfaction, but it builds up for itself a char- 
acter and a culture, which increase its value to itself 
and the world. Society grows rich in social wealth, 
as its sources of satisfaction are multiplied and deep- 
ened, and its power and influence are extended. The 
more society pays wisely for its higher good, the more 
capacity it has for the reception, enjoyment, and dis- 
semination of that good. Let us, for illustration, take 
two men, representatives of classes. One is a man of 
wealth, who hoards his money, or spends it stingily or 
selfishly. The other is one who spends freely of his 
means, for the culture of his brain and his heart. 
The sole satisfaction of one is in accumulating and 
keeping money. The other delights in intellectual pur- 
suits, in the gratification of his tastes, in the exercise 
and culture of his religious nature, in all those things 



256 Cost and Compensation. 

which inspire, feed, satisfy, and build up that which ia 
his manhood. Tell me, which of these two men is of 
the more value to himself? Plainly he who possesses 
the best and the largest number of sources of satisfac- 
tion. If these two men could possibly exchange places 
with each other, the miser would make an infinite gain, 
and the man would make an infinite loss. The man is 
worth more to himself than the miser, because his sour- 
ces of satisfaction are better, are more varied and 
numerous, are perfectly reliable, are inalienable, and 
are constantly deepening and extending. What is true 
of an individual is true of society. Society becomes 
rich in power, rich in sources of satisfaction, rich in 
character, rich in influence, and of value to itself and 
the world, according to the amount of its sacrifices for 
those institutions on whose prosperity the progress of 
society mainly depends. There can never be good 
society without good social institutions, and there can 
be no good social institutions without sacrifice. 

I ask you to look at this largess of recompense — 
this threefold reward, touching and enriching every 
interest, and then be mean in any expenditure for 
social good if you can. 

Thus far in this discussion, even when treating 
society as an organic, independent entity, I have 
spoken of this law mainly as it applies to the indi- 
vidual life of men. There is a broader view of the 



Cost and Compensation. 251 

law? remaining to be presented; and this covers its 
relation to the national life. The painter who com- 
poses a picture that is to cover a broad canvas, paints 
a small one first, which he calls " a study ; " the archi- 
tect who designs a cathedral, draws it first upon a 
small scale : and both painter and architect do this that 
they may keep their masses of detail within limits 
which the eye can embrace at a glance. We, too, 
shall find it for our advantage, before undertaking to 
get a view of a nation as a grand, organic life, to 
study some smaller kindred life — such, for instance, as 
we may find in a great city. 

A great city is a huge living creature, with life and 
breath and motives, and power and pride and destiny. 
Its being is just as distinct as that of a man. If we- 
could be lifted above it, and obtain, not a bird's-eye 
view, but a God's-eye view of it, Ave should see its arte- 
ries throbbing with the majestic currents of life, pushed 
out from its centre to its remotest circumference, and 
returning through a multitude of avenues ; fleets of 
winged messengers and ministers hanging and flutter- 
ing upon its wave- washed borders like a fringe ; breath 
of steam and smoke rising from its lungs ; food received 
by cargoes, and offal discharged by countless hidden 
estuaries into the all-hiding and all-purifying sea: 
grand forces of animal life and grander forces of art 
and nature harnessed to ceaseless service ; couriers of 



258 Cost and Compensation. 

fire flashing forth on their way to other cities, or 
returning from them with freights of life and treasure 
at their heels ; and, over all, a robe of august architec- 
tural beauty, broidered with the thoughts of the ages, 
and garnished with the greenery of parks and lawns. 
And this body, embracing all the varieties of human 
and animal life, and all the matter and material forces 
whose form and movements are apparent to the eye, is 
a living organism, and has a soul. Descending into it, 
we shall find it the subject of laws which it makes, and 
laws which it does not make. We shall find it a net- 
work of interests, with congeries of interests, acting 
and reacting upon one another. We shall find it with 
a moral character and a moral influence. We shall 
find it with a heart, will, and culture, peculiarities of 
disposition and genius and taste, just as distinct among 
the great cities of the world as those of a great man 
among the great men of the world. What a contrast 
of individuality and character do the two words Lon- 
don and Paris suggest ! Light and darkness convey 
ideas hardly more diverse. New York, Boston, Phila 
delphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati — how distinct 
the individuality which each of these words represents 
to us ! Bring before your imagination six great men, 
and you shall not find them more different in all that 
goes to make up their characteristic manhood, than 
these cities are in all that constitutes their individual- 



Cost and Compensation. 259 

ity. They are. I have no doubt, in the eye of God, 
organic creations, made np of an aggregate of human 
ity and human powers, peculiarities, and possessions, 
which have an interest, as such, independent of the indi- 
viduals which compose them. They have interests that 
over-ride personal interests, subordinating the man to 
the city, and a life and development of their own. 

It is said that the particles in the human body are 
changed every seven years. This can almost be said 
of a city, regarding men and women as the constituent 
units. Certainly these units are changed every genera- 
tion, but still the city lives. A man falls dead upon 
the sidewalk, or dies quietly in his bed. Does the 
city feel it ? His funeral will make part of the life of 
to-morrow. A few tears around a bier, a few clods 
upon a grave, a little family draped in black, and new 
life rushes to fill the place made .vacant by his depar- 
ture ! Day brings its roar and night its rest, and 
there is no pause ; there is not even a shudder at the 
extinction of a life. Twenty generations will pass 
away, and the great city which we see to-day will be 
greater still. The giant will be more gigantic, though 
not a life remains that even remembers the life of 
to-day. 

Thus, in this picture of a city, we have the study 
for a picture of a nation. I use the word nation, be- 
cause a nation in healthful life cannot be considered 



260 Cost and Compensation. 

apart from the country which is its dwelling-place, and 
because the word brings us closer to humanity than 
the word country. 

Take this study now — so small that we can measuie 
it and comprehend its details with a glance of the eye 
ind spread it upon the canvas. We have here a 
Colossus, the constituent units of which are men, cer- 
tainly, but men in cities, men in villages, men in town- 
ships, counties, States. Here is a grand organic being, 
with a range of life reaching through long millen- 
niums ; with a character and a manifestation of life 
peculiar to itself, and just as different from the other 
nations of the world as London is different from Paris, 
or Boston from New York, or Henry Clay from Daniel 
Webster, or Abraham Lincoln from Jefferson Davis. 
As we look down upon it, we find navigable rivers 
and lines of railroad and canal taking the place of 
streets ; continental stretches of coast haunted by sail 
and steam, instead of wharves and harbor bustle ; uni- 
versal production and transportation in place of limited 
trade ; instead of wreathed smoke, the breath of cli- 
mates, drawn in in storms, and expired in mists that 
drape the sky with the glory of the clouds ; and, sham- 
ing into insignificance the sorry piles of brick and stone 
which we call architecture, grand mountain-ranges," 
" rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; v fertile valleys 
that hold within their broad bosoms milk for a conti 



Cost and Compensation. 201 

nent; vast forests that bury their feet in the mould of 
uncounted centuries; lakes that glow alone like gems, or 
stretch across a continent their chain of silver; and scat- 
tered over all, informing all, making its mark upon all, 
appropriating all, a vast organized human life. This 
is the nation — body, and soul, and belongings. This 
is the grandest organized life that the world knows. 
The life of hundreds of millions is swallowed up in this 
life. It draws into itself the blood of a thousand gene- 
rations, and tinctures that blood with its own quality 
— gives it its own law. What makes a man an Eng- 
lishman ? — birth in England ? What constitutes an 
American ? — generation under a Western sky ? Why 
is a Frenchman a Frenchman ? — because he drew his 
first breath in France ? Nay. These men are not 
born into England, America, and France, so much as 
these countries are born into these men. This great, 
all-subordinating national life begets and bears its own ; 
so that, meet whom you may where you may, you shall 
fiud his national mark upon him, and all over him, and 
all through him — coloring his skin, characterizing his 
frame, tinting his eyes, and, in the large view, deter- 
mining the character of his mental constitution. Cli- 
mate, food, institutions, pursuits, religion — all contrib- 
ute to make him what he is. 

Now this great creature which we call a nation- 
one of the gigantic units in God's universe — which, in 



262 Cost and Compensation. 

its aggregate of influences, colors and characterizes the 
individual life of which it is composed, is, in turn, col- 
ored and characterized by that life. Its action is the 
expression of the sum of individual motives, and its 
character the sum of individual character. The sum 
of all Americans makes America, and America makes 
Americans what they are. 

We shall find that a nation's constitution and law 
of life are at least fairly illustrated by those of the indi- 
vidual man. A nation has grand material interests ; 
and it may become mean and miserly like a man. It 
has lusts and passions, and it may commit all crimes to 
gratify its greed for power and its passion for glory. It 
may be so fond of ease that it w T ill permit its liberties 
to be stolen from it. It may have a will so stubborn 
and unreasonable that it will sacrifice for its gratification 
peace and prosperity, in quarrels with other nations. 
It may have the vice of pride, so that it will take of- 
fence at every fancied insult, and be haughty and insolent 
in all its intercourse. It may be under the control of 
the lowest grade of motives ; and, on the other hand, 
it may bow loyally to the highest. It may hold wealth 
subordinate and subsidiary to those institutions and 
policies which tend to popular competence and comfort. 
It may sacrifice its passion for power to national com- 
ity, and the desire for the peace and the good-will of the 
world. It may subordinate its love of ease to the vigi- 



Cost and Compensation. 



263 



lant guardianship and defence of its rights. It may give 
up its will and its pride for the security of its peace and 
prosperity, or from higher motives of Christian principle. 

Iu the case of a nation, as in that of a man, an in- 
ferior possession is to be sacrificed as the price of a 
superior good, and this superior good can be had at 
this price, and cannot be had without it. Whatever 
of true glory has been won by any nation of the earth ; 
whatever great advance has been made by any nation in 
that which constitutes a high Christian civilization, has 
been always at the cost of sacrifice — has cost the price 
marked upon it in God's inventory of national gooc^. 

Now what are the items in this divine schedule ? 
I will name some of them ; and first, freedom — free- 
dom of person and pursuit, freedom of thought and 
worship, freedom of expression by type and tongue. 
Where freedom is wanting, the highest national good is 
wanting, for it is not only a good in itself, but it is the 
condition of all other national good. Without it, there 
is nothing in national life that is not base. After the 
freedom of the citizen, intelligence and virtue ; then 
good, competent, Christian rulers, selected because they 
are competent and Christian, and because they secure 
justice and humanity in the administration of law, and 
purity in office. Then peace and security, without which 
no national possession, high or low, is valuable. And 
with security and peace and a Christian administration 



264 



Cost and Compensation. 



of law, a studied and consistent policy which shall en- 
courage all that is desirable in morals, education, litera- 
ture, and art. Then fraternal concord, and harmony of 
sections and interests. I do not need to mention a hu- 
mane, honorable, and Christian character, for it is alike 
the source and sequence of all this desiderated good. 
Still less do I need to mention patriotism — the warm 
and devoted love of all the nation's children for their 
government and their fatherland ; for such a nation as 
this must be made of patriots, who glory in their nation- 
al name, and who are willing to sacrifice everything to 
that which is truly national glory. 

All the good which has been named, and all that is 
related to it, or associated with it, has a price ; and this 
price must be paid, or the good cannot be secured. 
Glance with me, for a moment, at one or two points 
of our early national history, that we may have con- 
venient illustration. Look at that little band of pil- 
grims that planted their feet on Plymouth Rock, nearly 
two centuries and a half ago. Watch them throughout 
the trials of that first winter, when half of them laid 
down their lives ; and watch them still through ail 
their subsequent struggles with the native tribes. See 
them winning their bread by the hardest, lodging in 
rude cabins, and ground almost into the earth by small 
economies, and, at the same time, planting school- 
houses and building churches. Mark how every act 



Cost and Compensation. 



205 



of their lives was a sacrifice — how every foundation- 
stone of this national temple of ours was laid in sacri- 
fice. Mark, further, how whole generations of asso- 
ciated colonial life built in sacrifice upon these founda- 
tions, cementing the whole structure with sweat and 
tears and blood. Did. it pay ? I do not ask now 
whether it paid. them. That question has already been 
disposed of. Regarding the nation as an organic indi- 
vidual, I ask whether these sacrifices secured any com- 
mensurate national good ? Was it a wise and profita- 
ble investment on the part of the nation ? There is 
but one answer to this question. 

If there is one fact that shines out with unques- 
tioned radiance from the history of all time, it is, that 
by the pangs of that mother-period — as necessary, as 
unavoidable, as the pangs of human birth — was the 
fairest nation born that Time counts among her children. 
All down these two long centuries has the nation been 
reaping in joy what then she sowed in tears. There 
was not a hardship endured, not a drop of blood shed, 
not a life laid down, in vain. There was not one sacri- 
fice for principle, not one unselfish effort for the gen- 
eral good, not one treasure of time, or ease, or vitality 
surrendered, that miscarried of its purpose. 

Still later came those sacrifices that won our na- 
tional independence. Independence was a good that 
had a price, and a heavy price it proved to be. Those 
12 



266 Cost and Compensation. 

brave, enduring, patient three millions paid it. Seven 
years of war, for what ? What was a little tax on tea ? 
What mattered the stamp on paper ? It did not 
amount to much — not a thousandth part as much as 
a war would cost. Ah ! but a principle was involved. 
Here was taxation without representation — tribute de- 
manded, and a voice in the government and even 
respectful petitions denied — and this was oppression. 
Popular rights were not only unrecognized, but tram- 
pled upon. The colonies which had already sacrificed 
much to establish their life as colonies, determined to 
be independent of a power that abused them, and bent 
themselves patiently to the task of paying the price 
which their independence would cost them. Seven 
years of war ! Seven years of blood, of hardship, of 
crippled prosperity, ending in total financial wreck ; 
seven years of weeping and watching, of scanty food 
and scantier clothing ; seven years of anxiety and dif- 
ference in the public councils, and of quarrels with 
public servants, even the spotless Washington being 
accused of the grossest political crimes ; seven years of 
vigilance against the intrigues of tories, who worked 
in the interest of the enemy, and clamored for peace ; 
seven years of what seemed to the observing nations 
of the world to be the hopeless struggle of a colonial 
handful with the most gigantic military and naval 
power of the earth. 



Cost and Compensation. 26? 

The end finally came. The price was all paid to 
the last drop of blood and the last tear — to the last 
hardship and heart-ache ; and the coveted boon was 
won. From this long struggle the nation rose a bank- 
rupt in everything but that one prize it had sacrificed 
every material good to obtain. It was independent, 
and had its destiny in its own hands. Was the new 
possession worth its cost ? Let the history of the last 
eighty years answer. We have grown from three to 
more than thirty millions. Never in the history of the 
world has a nation had such enormous growth, or sucl 
marvellous prosperity. The oppressed of all nations 
have found an asylum with us. It is no idle boast, but 
sober fact, that we stand to-day, as a nation, without a 
rival in the world in general intelligence, morality, and 
material resources. 

The American nation developed in its symmetry 
from the point of its independence. Colonial life was 
childhood ; independent life was manhood. If we, for 
a moment, suppose that this price had not been paid, 
we shall get a suggestion of the measure of good we 
should miss. It would reduce our thirty millions to 
ten, and make a contemptible Canada of our mag- 
nificent empire. Time would fail me to indicate the 
variety of good which the nation has received from the 
sacrifices of the Revolution, and imagination could not 
compass the amount. It is enough that none can deny 



2G8 



Cost and Compensation. 



that the reward for these sacrifices has been unspeak- 
ably munificent. 

These illustrations are two, among the thousands 
furnished by the history of the world. I choose them 
because they need no treatment. You are familiar 
with all the facts, and these facts teach us that this law 
of cost and compensation, beginning, as we have seen, in 
the life of the individual man, runs up through all the 
social and civil organizations and institutions of men ; 
that all those treasures which a nation holds dearest — 
its freedom, unity, independence, peace, security, pros- 
perity, character, and position — have their price in the 
free sacrifice of inferior good ; that those treasures are 
not only won at a cost but kept at a cost ; and that no 
national sacrifice can possibly be made, in the right 
spirit, for high ends, that does not, by an immutable 
law of God, procure a grand reward. 

Give and get ; sacrifice and win ; expend and grow 
rich ; minister and be helped — this is the lesson of 
our lecture ; and it is a lesson necessary to be learned 
before the first step can be taken in individual, social, 
and national progress. For our own good, God puts 
us on a business footing with Himself; and he is the 
only reliable paymaster. Do not be deceived by ap- 
pearances. If payment does not come at once, in 
return for a sacrifice, it is because you have only 
paid an instalment. Italy paid for her unity in instal- 



Cost and Compensation. 269 

meats. Rome has made one instalment of the price 
for her liberty. When the price is all paid, she will 
have it. Hungary has paid one instalment. Wait 
until she pays another, and another, and perhaps still 
another, and we shall learn, at last, the price of her 
independence. 

As I come to my closing page, I cannot choose but 
think of him. whom the nation loved — the pure, the 
wise, the gentle, the true — stricken from his high 
place by the hand of the assassin — every man's 
father, brother, and friend — the sweetest, noblest, 
costliest sacrifice ever laid upon the altar of free- 
dom. I cannot choose but think of half a million 
of men who, alive four years ago, sleep in the sol- 
dier's grave to-day. They perished, some of them, be- 
neath the fiery crest of battle, some of them after 
the wave had passed, and only the stars saw and 
pitied them, some of them in hospitals, some in 
ambulances, some of them in the sea — all of them 
for their country and its holy cause, with a patri- 
otic enthusiasm that rose to a sublime faith in their 
country's future, and a prophecy of its permanent glory 
and peace. I see, too, a million women draped in black 
— mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, lovers, of those 
who have given their lives to the great cause. There 
is mourning in the land — mourning all over the land. 
Not a battle has been fought that did not shake the 



270 



Cost and Compensation, 



nation's breast with one great sob of sorrow. I see a 
great sacrifice of treasure — time, industry, money, vital- 
ity, ease — more than I can compute ; more, indeed, than 
will ever be computed. I see a long period of taxa- 
tion for ourselves and our children ; but I see beyond 
all these, piled quietly against a golden sky, mountains 
of compensation, bright with the hues of a glorious 
peace, and holding within their purple bosoms treas- 
ures for the endowment of all the coming generations 
of men. 



AET AND LIFE. 



PRIMITIVE art must have been as humble, and 
its character as simple, as the life from which it 
sprang and to which it ministered. It was the crea- 
ture of rude utility, having relation only to man's mate- 
rial necessities — to the dressing and keeping of a gar- 
den, and the stitching of fig-leaves. It was entirely 
natural and rational that Jabal, Adah's first-born, 
should be the father of such as dwell in tents and have 
cattle, and that her later son, Jubal, should be the father 
of such as handle the harp and organ ; though I doubt 
not that Tubal-Cain wrought brass and iron, and was a 
favorite in the family for a good many years before 
Jubal effected much in instrumental music. 

It may be presumed that the arts necessary for 
securing food and raiment and shelter were those 
which had first development. They lay nearest the 
outreaching life of a new race. They were born of 
the natural, animal want to which they ministered 



272 Art and Life. 



They were the first things on which the instinct of 
self-preservation laid its hand. Ideas were an after- 
growth, and their expression in sound, and form, and 
color, and: language, an after-fact. When Jubal played 
his first tune, he opened the golden gate to a new 
realm. Music was a thing of the soul — a rose-lipped 
shell that murmured of the eternal sea — a strange bird 
singing the songs of another shore. In this first ex- 
pression of the soul, high art had its birth. The art 
which had preceded it had its origin and end in the 
material ; high art began and ended in the spiritual ; 
and this later development is so exalted above the for- 
mer, that we make the generic title specific, and call it 
Art. 

I propose to address you upon art and life — art as 
the expression of life, and life as the end of art. My 
first proposition is, that God and his creation, or God 
and nature, are the first facts in all life and all art. 
Nature is the expression of God's self and of God's 
life ; legitimate art is the expression of that which is 
godlike in man and in man's life. I only need to as- 
sume, w r hat you will all admit, that man is God's child, 
bearing His image, and partaking of His essence, to 
show that the expression of himself and of his life, 
when both are in their normal estate, must necessarily 
be after the order of nature and in the style of na- 
ture. If that which is greatest and best in man be like 



Art and Life. 



273 



God, then that which is greatest and best in art must 
be like nature. It is from this fact, and from no other 
fact, that nature becomes in some respects a standard 
by which to test the forms and qualities of art ; that 
is, of the highest art, which is essential creation. 

To develop my idea of art in its higher manifesta- 
tions, I begin at its lower. God expresses an idea in a 
beautiful landscape ; man, admiring it, expresses him- 
self by painting its picture. God makes a man of bone 
and brawn and blood ; man imitates the form as closely 
as he may in marble. God builds a forest, and man re- 
peats the sweep of its arches and the lines of its tracery 
in cathedrals. In the rolling thunder and the hoarse 
cataract, God speaks to man with audible voice, and 
writes his thoughts in woods and mountain-ranges, 
and stars and grass and flowers. So man speaks his 
thoughts to men by audible sounds and visible signs. 
God makes instruments of music, and His great life 
plays through them. The sounding shore, the gurgling 
brook, the roaring storm, the plashing waterfall — 
beasts, birds, and insects — weave their separate melo- 
dies into august harmonies. Man, too, makes instru- 
ments of music, and breathes through them the melo- 
dies and the harmonies of his life. 

So far, man expresses the life in him through his 
faculty of imitation. He simply takes in from nature, 
and gives out what he receives. Nature is his nurse 
12* 



274 



Art and Life. 



and his teacher. She speaks, and he faintly and imper- 
fectly repeats her words. At this point, what we call 
talent in man stops ; beyond this point talent never 
goes. It may flutter and mount with many a graceful 
gyration, but it cannot surpass it. Genius may imitate, 
and even in imitation show its divinity ; but it goes 
alone into the higher realms of art. Genius only can 
create and compose. Nature may educate and correct 
genius ; but its expression is the expression of a life 
unborrowed from nature — a life instituted, informed, 
and inspired by God Himself. If genius lays nature 
Trader tribute, it is for materials — not inspiration. It 
chooses from nature, and moulds to its will ; it assimi- 
lates nature to itself, ^and then utters it as its own ex- 
pression. Nature is the master of talent ; genius is 
the master of nature. Genius acts from the centre to 
the circumference, as a power of creation and order ; 
talent gathers from the circumference, and utters only 
what it gathers. Genius originates ideas and invents 
forms ; talent adopts ideas and imitates forms. Talent 
is instructed ; genius is inspired. 

My second proposition is, that nature, which is an 
expression of God's life, is not an end in itself, but is 
addressed to life, and has its end in life. The whole 
structure of the universe — the blue expanse above our 
heads, the sun, the moon, the constellations, the atmo- 
sphere which invests us, the great ocean, trackless, fath- 



Art and Life. 275 



omless, boundless ; all of inanimate nature that we see 
- — is utterly without significance and without value, 
save as it relates to life — the life to which it ministers 
and from which it proceeds. Not only inorganic but 
organic nature, in all its subordinate forms, relates to a 
life above and beyond itself. The earth feeds the 
grass, and the grass feeds the ox, and the ox feeds the 
animal life of man, and. the animal life of man serves 
the higher life of the human soul. We find life re- 
joicing in every element of nature — swimming in the 
sea, flying through the air, and rejoicing on the land. 
Even the old rocks of far-retired, ages are records of 
the great fact that they were that life might be ; and 
they even now bow their Titan shoulders, with patience 
and purpose, to sustain the burden of that which lives 
in the sunlight above them. 

There is not an atom of matter, not a form of beau- 
ty and grace, not a star in heaven nor a flower on the 
earth, not a rill that cleaves the sod nor a sea that 
chafes the shore, that does not appeal to life for the 
justification of its existence. 

Thus God becomes transitive through nature, into 
life. There is no such thing in nature as beauty for 
beautj 's sake ; all beauty is for man's sake. The pro- 
cession of the seasons, the phenomena of revolution and 
change, all the magnificent machinery operative in the 
natural world, are the ministry of the life of God to 



276 Art and Life. 



the life of men. We drink that life from these cups. 
When I take a flower into my hand, and mark its won- 
derful beauty of form and color, and inhale its fra- 
grance, I know that it is a thought of God expressed 
to me, and that one end of its value is upheld by God's 
thought and the other end by mine — that, save as the 
expression of one life, and the apprehension and appro- 
priation of another life, conjoined, it is as valueless as 
utter nothing. 

Upon this basis I rest my third proposition, and 
from this I propose to develop the lesson of the hour. 
This proposition is, that art is not an end in itself, and 
that it cannot be justified, save as it ministers to a life 
beyond itself. In other terms, art intransitive, without 
an object, is a monster, illegitimate in its origin and 
unjustifiable in its existence. A work of art, in any 
department of creation and composition, that has no 
ministry, is either a thing utterly without value, or a 
thing of discord and mischief. It is not enough that 
art be true to nature, for nature is not an end — it is a 
means. It is not enough that the artist be true to 
himself, for he is not the end of art. It is not enough 
that he be true to art, which simply means being true 
to certain conventional ideas and arbitrary rules, for 
art is not the end of itself. Art has a mission to life, 
and can only be true art when true to life through a 
well- administered purpose. The question which every 



Art and Life. 277 



true artist will ask himself before he undertake expres- 
sion will be, " What have I, in me, as the development 
of my life, which is susceptible of embodiment, and 
which I can embody, in a form of art that shall minister 
to the growth or the wealth of other life ? " 

Thus I take the standard of art out of the hand of 
the artist, out of the hand of art, and out of the hand 
of nature, and place it in the hand of life, arid bid the 
artist be true to that. He is not to bow to art, for art 
is his servant. He is not to bow to nature, for nature 
is God's servant. He is not to bow to himself, for he 
is life's servant. He is to bow to life — that to which 
he owes service — that which is necessary to give to art 
the slightest significance and value. 

The question of ultimate purpose becomes, then, 
the very first question in all sound and rational criti- 
cism. Primarily to be settled is the question of intent 
upon one side of a work of art, and of legitimate or 
actual effect upon the other. If the intent and the 
effect both be good, then the existence of the work is 
justified, and the work itself may be approached criti- 
cally from both sides ; — from both sides, I say, for the 
life of the author and the life of the age or the people 
that he addresses, furnish the only standpoints from 
which a work of art may legitimately be criticised 
The justification of a work of art existing only in its 
intent and effect, criticism may only decide whether 



278 Art and Life. 



the intent have its best possible embodiment in the 
work — whether the work embrace perfectly the artist's 
idea, and whether the end secured be the highest to be 
secured by the idea. Thus, if these principles are 
genuine, are laid aside the arbitrary rules of the 
schools, the notions and conventionalisms of a pes- 
tiferous dilettanti, the tests and standards born of the 
usages of the masters ; and the very soul and substance 
of criticism is brought within the compass of a nutshell, 
and the comprehension of all. 

To illustrate : we find spread over our heads a can- 
opy of blue. If, for the nonce, we assume the inter- 
pretation of the purposes of the Creator, this color was 
selected through the reach of His contrivance to pre- 
sent to the eye a soft and pleasant tint to meet its out- 
look into space. This sky is a work of nature, mar- 
velously beautiful. The intent is good ; the end is 
good ; and its existence is justified. Now let us ap- 
proach this work as critics. We are now ready to ask 
whether blue, of all the colors of the spectrum, is the 
best to paint a sky with — whether blue, of all those 
colors, is the most agreeable to the eye when looking 
into space, or whether some other color, or combina- 
tion of colors, would be better. If we can prove that 
some other color would be better for this purpose, then 
we can prove that the work, as a work of nature, is im- 
perfect. But no : we say that it is the embodiment of 



Art and Life. 279 



God's best thought, in God's best way, for the best 
achievement of a great and good purpose, relating to 
the life of His children. This conclusion would, of 
course, follow the critical examination of every other 
work of nature with which we are acquainted. And 
this is my key not only to all art but to all criticism. 

I have exhibited these principles, as the ground of 
my justification in declaring the prevalent ideas of art 
to be mainly a mass of crude conceits and inconsistent 
notions. I have exhibited them, that the people may 
assume for themselves a rational judgment of art, and 
enter upon a domain from which they have hitherto 
been excluded— upon which they have not even pre- 
sumed to enter. Hitherto, this domain has been the 
domain of mystery. Art itself looms upon the popular 
apprehension as a phantom — a great, shadowy, sublime 
something, into whose presence only a favored few 
may come ; into whose counsels and secrets only the 
world's elite may be admitted. It cannot be ap- 
proached through any of the ordinary channels of 
knowledge. Science, laden with the spoils of nature's 
arcana, stops embarrassed before this phantom, and 
bows and retires. Philosophy confronts it with bold- 
ness and determination, only to see it vanish into the 
impalpable and the incomprehensible. Wisdom, that 
has gathered into its storehouse the wealth of all lands 
and all languages, may not even give it good-morrow 



280 Art and Life. 



without betraying the accent of the unsophisticated 
Only those whose eyes have been anointed may see ; 
only those whose ears have been touched may hear ; 
only the mind that has been miraculously quickened 
may conceive the marvels of a world the brightest 
glories of which found their birth in the inspirations 
of paganism, and were addressed to an age of sensual- 
ity and shame. 

Homage to the old, the useless, and the arbitrary, 
is the price of that which is called the artistic sense. 
At the shrine of this absurd trinity, Christian man- 
hood, truth, and purity must kneel with votive offer- 
ings. On its altar must they sacrifice their first-born 
sense of the tasteful and truthful, in order to procure 
a vision of that which is inscrutable to natural eyes, 
and a love of that which appeals to no natural appetite 
or aptitude. So true is this that the conviction is al- 
most universal that artistic sense, or artistic taste, is a 
thing never inborn, but always acquired — that it is 
itself a thing of art, or something which proceeds from 
art. The multitude acknowledge that they know noth- 
ing of art. They see an old painting that they would 
hesitate to give a dollar for at an auction-shop, sold for 
a hundred guineas — " a phantom of delight " to critics 
and connoisseurs — and they shake their heads in pro- 
found self-distrust. They see a select few go into rap- 
tures over the long-drawn, dreary iterations and reitera* 



Art and Life. 281 



tions of a symphony, and confess that they know noth- 
ing of music. They read a literary performance which 
stirs and inspires them — which elevates and enlarge? 
them — which fills them with delight and satisfaction 
and are shocked and chagrined to learn, at the end of 
the month, by the shrewd critic of the review, that 
they have been so vulgar as to be pleased with some- 
thing that tramples upon every rule of art. 

So the people sit down, and heave the sigh of hum. 
ble despair. Art is something beyond them — some- 
thing above them. It is high ; they cannot attain unto 
it. It is profound ; they may not fathom it. Now 
this idea of art, as it is held alike by the initiated and 
the uninitiated, has its birth in distrust of the great 
truth that art is alike without meaning and without 
value save as it ministers to life by direct purpose ; the 
great truth that all true art is but a life-bearer from 
him who utters to him who receives. Art, as I have 
said before, is not an end in itself; and the only reason 
why art has done no more for the civilization and exal- 
tation of mankind is that artists, and the self-con sti- 
tuted arbiters of art, have hedged it in from the life of 
mankind. They actually put a work of art under ban 
which bears a mission to life, for the reason that it 
bears a mission. In their view, a work of art is actu- 
ally prostituted by the burden of a mission. If a les- 
son of life is to be conveyed, they would let the school- 



282 Art and Life. 



master and parson bear it. It must not profane the 
backs of the dapper gentlemen who do the sublime 
and beautiful for them. The art-critic of to-day con- 
temns and derides a work which has any intent in it 
beyond the satisfaction of the critical judgment of him- 
self and his precious fraternity. 

You will readily apprehend, from this train of rea- 
soning and remark, the ground of my claim that the peo- 
ple — the great world of hungry life — are the only com- 
petent judges of art. They recognize, know, and love 
the hand that feeds them — the hand that ministers to 
their want ; and they are the grand court of final judg- 
ment on all art and its authors. No artist ever won 
an immortality that was worth the winning, that he did 
not win from the people, by a ministry through direct 
purpose to the life of the people. This is no new doc- 
trine, even if it be not commonly accepted. " The 
light of the public square will test its value," said 
Michel Angelo to the young sculptor whose work 
he was examining ; confessing, master of masters as 
he was, his own incompetence to decide whether it 
should be immortal. 

You will remember that fifteen or twenty years 
ago two musical artists — players upon the same instru- 
ment — visited this country respectively to make a pro- 
fessional tour. One was the pet of the musical critics ; 
and he was undoubtedly more thoroughly versed in the 



Art and Life. 283 



technicalities and intricacies of his art, and possessed 
more of manual facility, than his rival. We were told 
that he was true to his art — truer by far than his com- 
petitor — and that the latter was a charlatan and a trick- 
ster. Well, this charlatan breathed out upon the peo- 
ple the life that was in him — the very pathos and pas- 
sion of his soul ; and the people drank it, and were blest. 
One of these artists was a man of talent and education ; 
the other, a man of genius and inspiration. Vieux 
Temps returned across the Atlantic, chagrined and 
disgusted ; Ole Bull remained to win the. admiration 
and the plaudits of a continent. 

Every year or two the musical critics are exercised 
with ecstacy by the miraculous performances — the runs 
and roulades, the trills and tricks — of some imported 
contralto or soprano, and bemoan the low state of art 
that hinders them from winning attention to that which 
they miscall art ; but when a pure and generous life, a 
noble womanhood, a soul of strength and sweetness — 
gushing with life in every expression, and sympathetic 
with life in every fibre — breathes through the lips of 
Jenny Lind, the people drink the nectar with greedy 
lips, till it overflows in tears. The immortality of Gre- 
cian-art sprang from its truth to the highest life of its 
time, and of its ministry to that liie. The Christian 
art of later centuries addressed also the highest life 
that lived, and the highest department of that life. 



284 Art and Life. 



The entire artist-life of Raphael was devoted to feed- 
ing the highest religious life of his country and his 
age. Hardly a picture of this master remains that was 
not born of religious inspiration, and intended to repro- 
duce in the beholder the exaltation out of which it pro- 
ceeded. Raphael is immortal. The people did not 
ask then, and they do not ask now, what were the 
characteristics of his school — whether this or that mas- 
ter modified the development of his genius — whether 
he learned this thing of one and that thing of another. 
They know that he gave his most exalted life to them 
embodied in forms of art ; that those forms enter into 
their life, elevating their conceptions and exalting their 
sensibilities, and that they have received a blessing. 

For the illustration of my position, I have dwelt 
thus far among the confines, the suburbs, of art. I 
have spoken only of that which resides in sound and 
form and color. Music may be divine, but its living 
is its dying. It gushes, and is drunk up by the thirsty 
silences. It bursts in blooming harmony, and the 
whole flower is at once exhaled. The great song that 
entranced the ears of the simple shepherds of Bethle- 
hem went back into heaven with the vocal host. The 
literal sentence was saved, but the pearls that glorified 
the sacred string were returned to their casket. All 
that is material perishes. Pigments fade, canvas de- 
cays, and marble crumbles. The long path of art is 



Art and Life. 285 



strewn with ruins. Thus the great aggregate of life 
that in the ages gone has sought embodiment in form 
and color will waste away, age after age, until only 
hollow names remain, to be read as we read the names 
on gravestones set over life and beauty turned to dust. 
It is only words that live, immortal representatives of 
everything evolved by the processes of thought, the 
experiences of life, and the operations of the imagina- 
tion. The temple of art is built of words. Painting 
and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its win- 
dows, borrowing all their significance from the light, 
and suggestive only of the temple's uses. 

To me, words are a mystery and a marvel. There 
is no point where man so nearly touches God as in 
creation by words. There is no point where art so 
nearly touches nature as when it appears in the form 
of words. What are these words ? They are the 
very nothing out of which God spoke creation into 
being. " Let there be light," said the Creator ; and 
there was light. It came of those words ; and it 
comes of ours as well. He spoke to perception ; we 
speak to imagination. We pronounce the word light, 
and the imagination sees the atmosphere flooded with 
sunshine. We pronounce th^word night, and straight 
the sky is studded with stars. Words paint the flower 
beyond the faculty and facility of the pencil. Words 
weave and wind the very harmonies of heaven. There 



286 Art and Life. 



is nothing that man knows, there is nothing that the 
heart has felt, there is nothing the imagination can 
conceive, that may not, and does not, find in words its 
highest revelation. Ah ! this is impalpable, invisible, 
plastic nihility — this formless mother of forms — this 
vitalized nothingness — this matrix of all being — words ! 
When the artist works with these, he works with that 
by which God made the universe ; and there is no 
genuine embodiment of the highest life of man which 
passes so directly into the life of other men as that 
which takes the form of words. The pencil and the 
chisel are but clumsy things by the side of the pen — 
the choicest and noblest of all instruments ever placed 
in human fingers. 

In sculpture and picture, man speaks to man by 
signs, to which the receiver of the utterance is unac- 
customed. Into those channels of expression the popu- 
lar life does not flow ; but words are familiar — the dies 
in which all daily life and thought are fashioned. 
Through words, life flows freely and exactly into life. 
Picture and sculpture are fixed and formal, and strive 
to make us understand them by attitude and expres- 
sive dumb-show. Words are vocal and vital, active 
and flexible, and enter the door of our perception 
whether we will or no. Words, in short, are not only 
the highest representatives of thought and life, but 
they are the representatives, the sources, the expound- 



Art and Life. 287 



ers, aDd the preservers of all that is highest in picture 
and sculpture. 

I approach this field of art with profound interest, 
for the first book upon which I lay my hand is the 
Bible. In this book God condescends to speak to men 
in words. Even He must come to this. The burning 
stars, the everlasting hills, the infinite sea, forests and 
streams and flowers — all his sublime sculpture, and 
infinitely varied picture, even when informed with 
vitality and instinct with action — are not sufficient for 
His purpose, not sufficient for His self-expression, and 
not sufficient for our satisfaction. He comes to con- 
vey to us something more of His life than He can con- 
vey through nature. He comes to us with a mission. 
Now, I ask, will He be simply didactic, or will He 
convey His life to us through forms of art ? If we 
examine the volume critically, we shall find that He 
embodies all His highest truth in these forms. The 
life He would convey is moulded into the form of 
human life, endowed with the spirit and the motives of 
humanity, and then passed over to us. He does not 
say in two words, "be patient," but He builds the trial 
and triumph of Job into an exquisite form of art ; and 
Ruth inculcates the lesson of filial love and duty in the 
sweetest pastoral that lives in language. He does not 
read to us dry lessons of morality, but he gives those 
lessons vitality in parables, iu which " a certain man " 



288 Art and Life. 



is made to live what He would have us learn. The 
sweet singer of Israel pours out his life to us in Psalms 
— divine life breathed into him, and breathed through 
him — and we drink in that life to feed the springs of 
our devotion. On the wings of exaltation and adora* 
tion furnished by the art of the Psalms, the praise and 
the thanksgiving of Christendom rise to heaven. 

I ask myself, why this huge volume of poems and 
allegories, and songs and narratives, and parables and 
pastorals ? Why this waste of type and paper ? Why 
all this wonderfully varied machinery for the convey- 
ance of a definite number of simple and sublime truths ? 
Why this exhibition of the same truths in wonderfully 
varied forms ? I find the answer, and I find it only, in 
ray theory of the mission of art ; and I claim the Bible 
as a divine recognition of the fact that art is the 
ordained vehicle for the conveyance of that which is 
divine in the life of man to the life of men. 

True art is that which is true in life, organized in 
the idea, in its relations to human motives — abstract 
truth, assimilated to life, and thus made food for life. 
Abstract truth is no better fitted to feed the soul's life 
than the abstract elements which enter into the compo-' 
sition of the body are fitted to feed the bodily life. 
Chemistry will tell me all the elements contained in 
the food I eat ; but if I take my food at the hand of 
chemistry, I shall die. Vitality must organize these 



Art and Life. 289 



elements, and then my vitality will feed upon them. 
So, if my soul try to live on abstract truth, it will 
starve. I cannot take my spiritual food from the hand 
of spiritual chemistry. It must be organized for me by 
a vital process — it must be lived in fact or in idea — 
before it can come into healthful relation to my spir- 
itual vitality. I cannot take even God Himself until 
He is manifested to me in human life. 

Thus, this book of books is a depository of the 
highest truth, all assimilated to life by the processes of 
art. Out of this exhaustless magazine of all that is 
divine in human life do the nations of Christendom 
draw their food. Forth from this has sprung our 
civilization. Out of this germinal mass have grown 
and will grow all good institutions ; and by it is 
human life to be wholly regenerated. We find in this 
book that when God works in the field of art, He 
works precisely as He does in that of nature — with 
direct reference to life. He never makes art an end 
of itself. As in nature, so in revelation, there is no 
such thing as beauty for beauty's sake ; all beauty is 
for man's sake. Every form of art contained in the 
Bible is but a vehicle for the conveyance of divine 
humanity to a life that needs it. 

But we leave the Bible, and take up a humbler vol 
ume — a volume which I suppose the majority of lite- 
rary men would conspire to place upon the lowest shelf 
13 



290 Art and Life. 



of art, and open the pages of The Pilgrim's Progress. 
From my point of vision, you will see that as a work 
of art this book must be regarded as one of the most 
remarkable ever written by mortal pen. More truly 
than any uninspired book with which I am acquainted 
does it spring out of life, and answer the end of art — 
passing into other life. An illiterate tinker sits in Bed- 
ford jail, and embodies in an allegory his own religious 
life. In this allegory he gives his highest self-expres- 
sion — organizes the truth that he has lived, for the 
nourishment of other life. It will be seen that the 
origin of the work is strictly legitimate, and that the 
intent is, beyond question, beneficent. What has been 
its effect ? It has been the grateful food of millions. 
It has been translated into a multitude of languages, 
and will live immortally in the heart and life of Chris- 
tendom. Yet Bunyan did not know what artistic 
sense meant. He was innocent of all knowledge of 
classical models ; but he had something in him, knew 
what he wanted to do with it, invented the best pos- 
sible way of doing it, and did it. Many of the greatest 
minds, though entangled by false theories of art, have 
not failed to recognize the angel in his pilgrim form, 
and have rendered him just tribute. When Southey 
and Cowper, Radcliffe and Franklin, Coleridge and 
Johnson, Jamieson and Macaulay, bring their offerings 
to such a shrine, the author may well spare the wor- 



Art and Life. 291 



ship of smaller minds. I grant that, as a work of art, 
this great vehicle of Bunyan's life is roughly finished, 
but that may well be rough which comes from the 
hand of a giant. 

We now come to the consideration of an acknowl 
edged master — crowned by the critics and the people 
alike as the world's master. What is Shakspere's 
secret ? What was the material with which he 
wrought ? Life — always life. In some, perhaps many, 
respects, he is indeed the world's master. More than 
any other man has he drunk in, assimilated and organ- 
ized in forms of art the life of the world. The king 
and the courtier, the prince and the peasant, the fop 
and the fool ; manhood and womanhood pure and 
simple and beautiful — manhood and womanhood black 
with impurity, passion, and craft ; every form of life 
that came within the range of his far-sweeping vision 
—he appropriated to his uses. These he associated 
and informed with life and motive ; and then he em- 
bodied in language the dramas which their life played 
in his wonderful brain. This is the life he has trans- 
mitted to us ; and in it, and in it alone, resides his 
power over us. Bunyan and Shakspere are very dif- 
ferent ; yet both are masters. Shakspere was a highly 
vitalized medium through which the life of humanity 
passed into artistic organization for the use of othei 
life ; Bunyan was a medium hardly less vitalized, 



292 Art and Life. 



through which the divine life passed into form fol 
the nourishment of the same life. 

Though the field is tempting, the lack of time for- 
bids the further illustration of this point. I cannot 
leave it, however, without recalling for a moment my 
proposition that the people are the true judges of art, 
and that all immortality worth the winning must be 
won from the people. All the critics in the world can- 
not kill the Bible. All that philosophy and science 
and learning can do to effect this object has been 
done ; but it is stronger to-day than ever before, be- 
cause the people find a life in it which they need, and 
which they can find nowhere else. I speak of the 
book now simply as a collection of works of art, with- 
out reference to its origin. Bunyan was immortal long 
before the critics of art found it out. Shakspere would 
have been forgotten centuries ago if he had not had a 
ministry for the people. When the people will not 
come to the support of the critics — when they fail to 
find anything in a work of art which ministers to their 
growth and wealth — that work, in my judgment, is 
competently condemned. It answers no purpose in the 
earth. It has no apology for existence. A fictitious 
halo of glory may be thrown around it, and its 
author's name may descend to posterity in books, 
and a feeble and foolish dilettanti may make it the 
theme of encomium ; but it is a dead thing, which 



Art and Life. 293 



must ultimately descend to a burial too profound for 
resurrection. 

Although I have recognized with sufficient direct- 
ness the popular want with relation to the ministry of 
art, I have failed to consider that want distinctly in the 
light of a demand which has a place in the basis of my 
theory. I have stated, as a general fact, that no man 
wins immortality in art save by ministering to the life 
of the people ; but I have not stated that the demand 
for life at the hand of the artist helps to fix — nay, 
independently of everything else, fixes — the province, 
and defines the mission, of art. In the whole range of 
nature, every want has placed over against it an appro- 
priate source of satisfaction. If there be a well of 
water in the desert, and a crowd of thirsty Arabs 
around it, the office of that well is defined by that 
thirst. So if a town need bread, and there be only one 
man who can bake it, that man's province and mission 
are as well defined by that want, as by the power and 
skill he has within >him. If such a man should say, 
" I have nothing to do with this want — I did not make 
it ; I am to be true to the highest faculties I possess, 
and the glory of my trade ; I will make patty-cakes 
and pastry ; if the people will not buy these, the worse 
for them ; as for ministering to this clamor of popular 
want, I will do no such thing " — I say that if such a man 



294 Art and Life. 



should say this, we should call him a fool or a mad- 
man — possibly worse names than these. 

Now, in the consideration of this subject, I 6ee 
before me two classes of men. One is comparatively 
small, but it is full of vitality, and rich with life. The 
other is large, and poor in these elements. The artists 
are opulent ; the people are in poverty, and in need of 
the overflowing life which the artists possess. I know 
that there is no way for the administration of this life 
save through forms of art. " Give us of your wealth," 
say the people ; " give it to us in a vehicle by means 
of which we may be enabled to appropriate the whole 
of it, for we are poor, and in need of that of which you 
possess an abundance." When I see and hear this, 
and learn that this want can only be supplied by the 
artist, I am left in no doubt touching the character of 
his mission, and the direction of his duty. 

Mark how this appetite for life is pronounced — this 
need of life declared. Mark how the newspaper has 
become the universal fire-side companion — how its 
morning visit is as necessary for the satisfaction of 
a daily arising want, as the coffee and the rolls of the 
breakfast-table ; and mark, too, how everything — mar- 
riages, deaths, and all — is read before the dry and 
didactic leader. Mark how the personalities of the 
press — kind or otherwise — are first devoured in the 
greedy appetite to get at the life of others. We may 



Art and Life. 295 



deplore this devotion to the newspaper, but it can 
neither be checked, nor diverted, until a better life can 
be drunk in from other sources. The newspaper is 
only fascinating and absorbing because it feeds better 
than the popularly available forms of art this demand 
for life. 

Mark, too, the interest of old and wise men in the 
books written for children — books, by the way, the 
truest to the mission of art of any to be found in our 
literature. I do but give voice to the common expe- 
rience in the assertion that a first-class juvenile is as 
interesting and as instructive to the mature mind as to 
the immature. The truths elucidated may be familiar 
— even trite ; but the life in which they are cast minis- 
ters to this ever-open want, and confers a fresh vitality 
npon the truths themselves. 

Rising into a higher range of literary art, we find 
almost the whole world engaged in novel-reading. 
Many of the wise and good shake their heads over it. 
Careful and conscientious parents place fiction under 
ban in their households. The pulpit fulminates against 
it, even if the church fail in terms to proscribe it. 
Signal instances of its sad effects upon the mind and the 
morals are portrayed in the issues of the Tract Society, 
but still the reading goes on ; and from one to one 
hundred editions of every work find buyers and read- 
ers. If the novel is not read openly, it is read in 



296 Art and Life. 



secret ; if not by sun-light, by gas-light ; if not in the 
house, or under genial sanction, then in the barn, or 
under a green tree. Why all this swallowing of so 
much that is trash ? Why this almost indiscriminate 
devotion to worth and worthlessness ? Is this all from 
a debased or a morbid appetite ? By no means. You 
will find the high and the low all agreed upon a work 
of fiction from the pen of genuine genius, true to its 
mission. Of living, active writers, Mr. Dickens and 
Mrs. Stowe will have the most convenient shelf of the 
library of him who reads " The Devil's Darning-Needle 
— a Tale of Love, Madness, and Suicide," as well as 
that of the man of high and chastened tastes. 

Life ! Life ! This is the cry of the multitude — 
life, true and chaste and beautiful — life that shall nour- 
ish and enrich us, if we can get it, but life of some 
kind — life of any kind — rather than none. This great 
world of common life, bound to the work-bench, the 
farm, the counting-room, the four walls that inclose the 
domestic circle, the factory, the ceaseless routine of 
daily toil and care in every sphere, cries for the wealth 
of other life. It cannot go out, and gather life ; so it 
eagerly grasps that which comes to it. It cannot mix 
in multitudes, and travel, and enter into varied society ; 
so it must buy multitudes, and buy travel, and buy so- 
ciety, in books — so art must bring them into com- 
munion with life. This cry for life cannot be stifled. It 



Art and Life. 297 



can only be hushed by satisfaction. History, narrative, 
biography — all these — are laid under tribute in accord- 
ance with individual tastes for the supply of this want. 

If you will go up and down this land, and, when 
you find him, place your hand upon the shoulder of the 
preacher who draws the largest audiences, has power 
over the greatest number of minds, and moulds and 
sways public sentiment more than any other, you will 
find him to be one who exhibits his truth organized in 
the form, and instinct with the breath, of life. You 
will not find him the expounder and the champion of a 
creed — the retailer of second-hand dogmas, and ready- 
made rules and formulas, but the promulgator of a life 
— a life which he has in him, fed by every fountain 
that God and humanity open to him. 

So I say that in the want of the world, no less than 
in the vital wealth of the artist — in the want of the 
world, no less than in the economy of God in creation 
and revelation — is the true mission of art defined. 
Never, until this mission shall be comprehended and 
practically entered upon, will art rise to be the power 
in the earth that it ought to be, and is destined to be. 
We mourn over the decadence of art in its Italian 
home. We lament the insignificant position that it 
has achieved in this country. We cross the seas, or 
go back to a dead literature, to gather from the old 
masters their secret. We strive to filch from a burnt- 
13* 



298 Art and Life. 



out life the light and inspiration which may only be 
invoked from a living present and a possible future. 
We look to decayed nationalities and effete civiliza- 
tions for ideals and ideas upon which those very 
nationalities and civilizations have starved. We re- 
fer to the old models of thought and art with slavish 
deference to classic authority. We strive to cast the 
burning life, molten in Christian love, of this latter day 
of grace, into the old moulds of pagan art and litera- 
ture — outgrown, outlived, and outlawed. We bow to 
the life behind us, and not to that within us and be- 
fore us. We stand upon the mountain-tops of life, and 
peer down into the valleys for light. 

Pray Heaven we may have no art in this country, 
until we can learn to be as true to the life within us 
and without us as those whom we have learned to call 
masters were true to their own life and that of their 
age ! We have the same foundation to build upon that 
they had. We have a hundredfold richer materials 
than they had. Our civilization and institutions are 
purer and higher than theirs. Into all our life and 
thought have been infused the fertilizing influences of 
Christianity ; and what shall prevent an unprecedented 
development of art save blind obedience to artificial 
standards, reared among the ancient schools, standing 
half way between us and chaos, rather than half way 
between us and the millennium ? 



Art and Life. 209 



I have repeatedly said that, save as art ministers 
directly to the life of the people, by definite purpose, 
it is illegitimate. I have nowhere said, directly, that 
the beautiful in art has a mission to life and a ministry 
for it ; and this I wish to say here. I do not propose 
to speculate upon the nature of the beautiful, presum- 
ing that your minds are already sufficiently confused 
on that subject. Driving after practical truth, I go 
back to my first facts — to God and nature — to find the 
legitimate mission of beauty. Only in subordinate 
departments of nature do I find beauty a leading ele- 
ment, or a principal purpose. In a pansy, a daisy, 
and a rose, as in a wide sisterhood of flowers, I find no 
object consulted higher than the pleasure of vision, or 
the excitement into activity of the sense of the beauti- 
ful ; and when I find millions drinking in this beauty 
with exquisite pleasure, and see that it has a refining 
and harmonizing power upon their life, I conclude that 
beauty in nature, independently of all other elements 
and properties, has a mission from God to the life of 
men — that through it something of God's life passes 
into man's life. 

I look upon a wheat-field, spread like a sheet of 
gold upon the hill-side, and as the shadows of the 
clouds chase each other over it, and it bends, and 
swells in soft undulations, to the will of the wandering 
wind, I say and feel that it is very beautiful. It moves 



300 Art and Life. 



me more than the rose that I hold in my hand ; but I 
see at once that the beauty of the wheat-field is a sub- 
ordinate element — that it is no more, in fact, than the 
glory, the efflorescence, of the element of fitness. It is 
eminently fit that that sheeted aggregation of plants 
which have sucked up from the soil, and, by vital elab- 
oration, have prepared for my hand that which feeds 
my life, should be beautiful. The beautiful is a proper 
dress for that to appear in which is the very staff of my 
life. 

I look out upon the ocean when the sun is bright 
and the wind is still ; when spectral spars and sails flit 
along the edge of the horizon, and the sea-birds toss 
the sunshine from their wings in flakes of silver, and 
the surf gently kneels at the feet of the headland 
where I stand, and bathes them with its tears, and 
wipes them with its flowing hair, and I say that it is 
all very beautiful : but this beauty is not what the 
ocean was made for. It is only the fitting garb of the 
infinite storehouse of waters from whence arise the 
clouds that spread the heavens with glory, and rejoice 
the earth with showers. It is only the proper physiog- 
nomy of the great and wide sea, which defines national- 
ities and races ; upon whose bosom buoyant Commerce 
weaves the meshes of human interest, that bind clime 
to clime, and unite universal man in universal brother- 
hood. 



Art and Life. 301 



With the lesson which these my first facts teach 
me, I come back to art ; and if this be a legitimate les- 
sod, drawn from the only legitimate source, I am pre- 
pared to tell exactly what the mission of beauty in art 
is. In art, as in nature, beauty has a subordinate mis- 
sion. If art be simply the medium by which life is 
transported from those who are rich in gift and grace 
and goodness to those who are not equally rich, or not 
rich in identical wealth, the simple question to be set- 
tled, is, whether beauty be the highest evolution of life 
on one side, and the greatest need of life upon the 
other. I assume that there can be but one answer to 
this question, and that beauty never is, and never can 
be, more than the shell of the highest art — the appro- 
priate dress of vital values. I find beauty as the 
supreme end of art justified in nature, but only in min- 
iature forms and limited instances. Always, as nature 
rises toward high ends and important issues, beauty 
ceases to be an element, and takes the subordinate 
position of a quality or property, with relations to that 
which is essential. 

Now you will bear me witness that the slavery of 
art to beauty is universal. The aim of nine-tenths, at 
the least, of all the forms of art that have been uttered 
in the departments of picture, sculpture, and poetry, has 
been ministry to the sense of the beautiful. The voice 
of universal art is— beauty first and at any sacrifice; 



Art and Life. 



beauty exclusively if necessary. Beauty has been com* 
pelled to come in. If the palaces of thought would 
not furnish it, then the highways and hedges have 
been laid under compulsory tribute, while the highest 
end of art has been forced into the lowest seat, or 
thrust out of the house for lack of a becoming gar- 
ment. 

Thus has art been cheated out of its sinews and its 
soul. Thus has it failed, where it has flourished most 
luxuriantly, to preserve the life of nations from decay. 
Thus are we, in this country, drinking the breath and 
toying with the curls of beauty, and all the while won- 
dering why, in an age far in advance of all its predeces- 
sors, in power, activity, civilization, culture, freedom, 
and positive goodness, art has made no greater prog- 
ress. I only wonder that it has a name to live — that it 
has not utterly starved upon the husks which have 
been its food. Thank God for the few great souls, 
scattered here and there, along the track of history, 
that were a law unto themselves, and revealed all the 
life that was in them, in such forms as that life natur- 
ally assumed. 

I have been obliged by the limits of an effort like 
this to deal in broad generalities, and these relating 
entirely to the highest departments of art. I might 
profitably spend another hour in exhibiting the bear- 
ings of my theory upon the range of art that lies below 



Art and Life. 308 

my theme — upon that which is simply imitative and 
adaptive ; but my pen respects your patience, and I 
will only add a few practical conclusions. 

My first conclusion is, that there is, and can be, no 
such thing as a general standard of art and. criticism, 
having relation to form and management. There is no 
such thing in nature. A horse is made for fleetness : 
so is a swallow ; so is an antelope ; so is a greyhound. 
An elephant is made for strength : so is an ox ; so is a 
lion ; so is a bull-dog. Suppose a critic of nature 
should set up his standard at the side of the horse, and 
insist that a swallow should have four legs, a grey- 
hound hoofs, and an antelope a switch tail. Or sup- 
pose he should set it up at the side of the elephant, 
and insist on tusks for the ox, a trunk for the lion, and 
a greater show of ivory on the part of the bull-dog. 
We should all laugh at such a critic as this ; yet a 
critic like this is just as ridiculous in the domain of art 
as in the domain of nature. In nature, we always find 
the form of each creature exactly adapted to the life 
that is in it ; and both life and form are adapted to 
their mission. Every creature of God is sent into the 
world to live a certain life, and do a certain thing, and 
is endowed with precisely that form which will best 
enable it to live that life, and do that thing. Forms, 
varying almost infinitely, combine the same elements. 
The greyhound and the swallow are fleet, yet one is 



304 Art and Life. 



borne upon feet and the other upon wings. There* 
fore I say that the life embodied in a form of art, 
and the mission to other life on which it is sent, must 
always determine and define that form, without regard 
to any arbitrary standard whatsoever — without regard 
to any other form in the universe of art. Therefore I 
say that a man who condemns a work of art because it 
is not like something else, does not know what he is 
talking about. Every work of art has in its centre a 
germinal idea, which has, in itself, a law of develop- 
ment, and this development cannot be cramped or 
interfered with in any way, without damage to the 
work. I know of no way by which such a work may 
be judged save the one I have already given to you. 
Does it embody the artist's idea in the best form for 
producing the effect at which he aims ? That is the 
question, simply and solely. It has nothing to do with 
schools, precedents, authorities, and general rules what- 
ever. 

This leads me to another practical conclusion which 
has, in substance, already been affirmed, viz., that you 
and I, and everybody who has brains and uses them, 
are competent judges of art, in the measure that we 
are competent judges of anything. If I display a pic- 
ture, or unveil a statue, or read a poem or a story, or 
exhibit any form or creature of art to you, and you 
experience no thrill of delight, and drink in no thought 



Art and Life. 30{ 



that feeds in any way the life that is in you, so that you 
feel enriched by it, I declare that work of art to be 
competently condemned, notwithstanding a single con- 
noisseur, judging by his arbitrary standard, may pro- 
nounce it a gem. So far as you and I are concerned, 
it is a failure, and so far as we represent the world, it 
is a failure before the world. There is nothing in it 
that we want ; there is nothing that the world wants. 
In short, if there be nothing in a work of art save that 
which is addressed to the critical judgment of a few 
dawdlers and dilettanti, professional wine-tasters who 
cluster about the spigots of art — experts, who have no 
life that was not born of art, and no life out of art — ■ 
then that work has no apology for existence, save the 
ignorance or the hallucination of its author. 

Another and a most important practical conclusion. 
is, that the life must be rich which produces art, or it 
will have no wealth to convey to other life. Many 
young persons — men and women — with genius in them, 
and with all the natural yearning of genius for self- 
expression, write books, and give them to the world 
only to be disappointed, and to sink back into disgust 
with a public which is not capable, as they think, of 
appreciating them. But does not this stupid public 
appreciate Shakspere and Milton ? Ah ! the trouble is 
that the public does appreciate them. They have 
nothing, and can have nothing, to give the world, and 



306 Art and Life. 



why should the world be grateful ? They have only 
dealt with books and dreams. They have only become 
imperfectly prepared to live, themselves, and what have 
they to give to other life ? The struggles, the sorrows, 
the patient toil, the collisions, the ten thousand polish 
ing, chastening, softening, fertilizing, and strengthen- 
ing influences which give them symmetry, power, 
knowledge of human motive, and sympathy with the 
universal human heart, are all unexperienced. I be- 
lieve that the world, in the main, sooner or later, is 
just ; and that it will weave a crown for every man 
and woman who by ministering to its life deserves it. 
I believe that every man who gives the results of a 
rich life to the public, in higher or humbler forms of 
art, will be recognized by the public — that the public 
will turn to him as one of the benign sources of its 
life ; and this, not so much from a sense of justice, as 
from unthinking obedience to a natural law — the law 
that turns the infant's lips to its mother's bosom, and 
the dying saint to his Redeemer's promises. 

And now for a practical conclusion of a more grate- 
ful character — the conclusion of this address. If I 
apprehend the signs of the times, in their true aspect, 
a brighter day is dawning upon the world of art. In 
all departments of thought and life we are cutting loose 
from the old, and thinking and doing for ourselves, in 
obedience to the life within us, and with reference tc 



Art and Life. 307 



the living realities of to-day. More and more distinct* 
ly pronounced is the call of the world for help, and 
more and more is that call respected ; for the world of 
life is beginning to take judgment into its own hands. 
More and more is the patronage of art, in all its forms, 
passing from the hands of the church — from the hands 
of royalty and wealth and power — into the hands of the 
people. Less and less is art the servant of the great, 
and the pensioned glorifier of doughty names and 
doubtful institutions. Art has now to deal with the 
people more than ever before in the world's history. 
The critical middle-men bless and curse with less effect 
than formerly ; and artists of every class will be com- 
pelled to give the world what it needs. 

I believe both in the law and the fact of progress ; 
and as life is more opulent now than ever before, so a 
higher art is possible now than has ever existed. I be- 
lieve, too, that the ages which are to follow this will 
surpass our richness of life, and our possibilities of art, 
as they will transcend this and all preceding ages in 
expression. The art of to-day should embody the 
highest life of to-day for the use of to-day ; for those 
who have gone before us need it not, and those who 
will come after us will have something better. The 
art that now lies in glittering piles upon the shore of 
achievement was deposited by waves which started 
near the land, and found but insignificant spoils as they 



308 Art and Life. 



rolled in and burst upon the beach. Closely behind us 
press other billows, with mightier bosoms and loftier 
crests, surging in from further climes and richer seas, 
with contributions that will shame our unproductive 
age. 

I not only believe in progress, but in communion as 
its vital condition. It is the condition of progress in 
religious life, and it is the condition of progress in all 
life. Those who are great, and those who would be 
great, must serve. Those who would win for their 
names a wreath of glory, must expend their lives in 
ministry. The name that is above every name belongs 
to Him who communicated His whole life to the race. 
Universal progress is impossible, save as the barren 
many become partakers of the life of the fertile few. 

Painter, sculptor, poet, — worker in words of what- 
soever name — minister of the life which is — prophet of 
that which is to be, — have I not shown to you your 
mission ? Hungry waiters at the door of art — thirsty 
loiterers at the fountain of life — hold to your right, and 
demand that that mission be fuliilled ! 



THE POPTTLAE LECTTTEE. 



fTlHE popular lecture, in the Northern States of 
JL America, has become, in Yankee parlance, " an 
institution ; " and it has attained such prevalence and 
power that it deserves more attention and more respect 
from those who assume the control of the motive influ- 
ences of society than it has hitherto received. It has 
been the habit of certain literary men (more particu- 
larly of such as do not possess a gift for public speech), 
and of certain literary magazines (managed by persons 
of delicate habit and weak lungs), to regard and to 
treat the popular lecture with a measure of contempt. 
For the last fifteen years the downfall of what has been 
popularly denominated " The Lecture System " has 
been confidently predicted by those who, granting 
them the wisdom which they assume, should have 
been so well acquainted with its nature and its adapta- 
tion to a permanent popular want as to see that it must 
live and thrive until something more practicable can be 



310 The Popular Lecture. 

contrived to take its place. If anything more interest- 
ing, cheaper, simpler, or more portable, can be found 
than a vigorous man, with a pleasant manner, good 
voice, and something to say, then the popular lecture 
will certainly be superseded ; but the man who will 
invent this substitute is at present engaged on a new 
order of architecture and the problem of perpetual mo- 
tion, with such prospect of full employment for the 
present as will give " the lecture system " sufficient 
time to die gracefully. An institution which can main- 
tain its foothold in the popular regard throughout such 
a war as has challenged the interest and taxed the 
energies of this nation during the last three four is 
one which will not easily die ; and the history of the 
popular lecture proves that, wherever it has been once 
established, it retains its place through all changes of 
social material, and all phases of political and reli- 
gious influence. Circumstances there may be which 
will bring intermissions in its yearly operations ; but no 
instance can be found of its permanent relinquishment 
by a community which has once enjoyed its privileges, 
and acquired a taste for the food and inspiration which 
it furnishes. 

An exposition of the character of the popular lec- 
ture, the machinery by which it is supported, and the 
results which it aims at and accomplishes, cannot be 
without interest to thoughtful readers. 



The Popular Lecture. 31 1 

What is the popular lecture in America ? It will 
not help us in this inquest to refer to a dictionary ; for 
it is not necessary that the performance which Ameri- 
cans call a lecture should be an instructive discourse 
at all. A lecture before the Young Men's Associations 
and lecture organizations of the country is any charac- 
teristic utterance of any man who speaks in their em- 
ployment. The word " lecture " covers generally and 
generically all the orations, declamations, dissertations, 
exhortations, recitations, humorous extravaganzas, nar- 
ratives of travel, harangues, sermons, semi-sermons, 
demi-semi-sermons, and lectures proper, which can be 
crowded into what is called " a course," but which 
might be more properly called a bundle, the bundle 
depending for its size upon the depth of the managerial 
purse. Ten or twelve lectures are the usual number, 
although in some of the larger cities, beginning early 
in " the lecture season," and ending late, the number 
given may reach twenty. 

The machinery for the management and support of 
these lectures is as simple as possible, the lecturers 
themselves having nothing to do with it. There are 
library associations or lyceum associations, composed 
principally of young men, in all the cities and large vil- 
lages, which institute and manage courses of lectures 
every winter, for the double purpose of interesting and 
instructing the public and replenishing their treasury. 



812 The Popular Lecture. 

The latter object, it must be confessed, occupies the 
principal place, although, as it depends for its attain- 
ment on the success of the former, the public is as well 
served as if its entertainment were alone consulted. 
In the smaller towns there are usually temporary asso- 
ciations, organized, for the simple purpose of obtaining 
lecturers and managnngr the business incident to a 
course. Not unfrequently, ten, twenty, or thirty men 
pledge themselves to make up any deficiency there 
may be in the funds required for the season's entertain- 
ments, and place the management in the hands of a 
committee. Sometimes two or three persons call them- 
selves a lecture-committee, and employ lecturers, them- 
selves risking the possible loss, and dividing among 
themselves any profits which their course may produce. 
The opposition or independent courses in the larger 
cities are often instituted by such organizations, — some- 
times, indeed, by a single person, who has a natural turn 
for this sort of enterprise. The invitations to lecturers 
are usually sent out months in advance, though very 
few courses are definitely provided for and arranged 
before the first of November. The fees of lecturers 
range from fifty to a hundred dollars. A few uniform- 
ly command the latter sum, and lecture-committees 
find, it for their interest to employ them. It is to be 
presumed that the universal rise of prices will change 
these figures somewhat. 



The Popular Lecture. 313 

The popular lecture is the most purely democratic 
of all our democratic institutions. The people hear a 
second time only those who interest them. If a lec- 
turer cannot engage the interest of his audience, his 
fame or greatness or learning will pass for nothing. A 
lecture-audience will forgive extravagance, but never 
dulness. They will give a man one chance to interest 
them, and if he fails, that is the last of him. The lec- 
ture-committees understand this, and gauge the public 
taste or the public humor as delicately as the most 
accomplished theatrical manager. The man who re- 
ceives their invitation may generally be certain that the 
public wish either to see or hear him. Popularity is 
the test. Only popularity after trial, or notoriety be- 
fore, can draw houses. Only popularity and notoriety 
can pay expenses and swell the balance of profit. No- 
toriety in the various walks of life and the personal in- 
fluence of friends aud admirers can usually secure a 
single hearing, but no outside influence can keep a lec- 
turer permanently in the field. If the people " love to 
hear " him, he can lecture from Maine to California six 
months in the year ; if not, he cannot get so much as a 
second invitation. 

One of the noticeable features of the public humor 

in this matter is the aversion to professional lecturers,— 

to those who make lecturing a business, with no high 

er aim than that of getting a living. No calling or 

14 



814 The Popular Lecture. 



profession can possibly be more legitimate than that 
of the lecturer ; there is nothing immodest or other- 
wise improper in the advertisement of a man's literary 
wares ; yet it is true, beyond dispute, that the public 
do not regard with favor those who make lecturing 
their business, particularly if they present themselves 
uninvited. So well is this understood by this class of 
lecturers that a part of their machinery consists of invi- 
tations numerously signed, which invitations are writ- 
ten and circulated by themselves, their interested 
friends, or their authorized agents, and published as 
their apology for appearing. A man who has no other 
place in the world than that which he makes for him- 
self on the platform is never a popular favorite, unless 
he uses the platform for the advocacy of some great 
philanthropic movement or reform, into which he 
throws unselfishly the leading efforts of his life. Re- 
ferring to the history of the last twenty years, it will 
readily be seen that those who have undertaken to 
make lecturing a business, without side pursuit or 
superior aim, are either retired from the field or are 
very low in the public favor. The public insist, that, 
in order to Be an acceptable lecturer, a man must be 
something else, that he must begin and remain some- 
thing else ; and it will be found to-day that those only 
who work worthily in other fields have a permanent 
hold upon the affections of lecture-going people. It 



The Popular Lecture. 315 

is the public judgment or caprice that the work of the 
lecturer shall be incidental to some worthy pursuit, 
from which that work temporarily calls him. There 
seems to be a kind of coquetry in this. The public do 
not accept of those who are too openly in the market, 
or who are too easily won. They prefer to entice a 
man from his chosen love, and account his favors 
sweeter because the wedded favorite is deprived of 
them. 

A lecturer's first invitation, in consonance with 
these facts, is almost always suggested by his excel- 
lence or notoriety in some department of life that may 
or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes 
a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to 
lecture ; but he is no more certain to be invited than 
he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invita- 
tion for the same reason that an author does, — because 
he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture- 
field are introduced through the popular desire to see 
notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on 
the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye 
desires to see. Such a man will always draw one 
audience ; and a single occasion is all that he is en- 
gaged for. After getting a place upon the platform, 
it is for him to prove his power to hold it. If he does 
not lecture as well as he writes, or fights, or walks, or 
lifts, or leaps, or hunts lions, or manages an exhibition, 



316 The Popular Lecture. 

or plays a French horn, or does anything which has 
made him a desirable man for curious people to see, 
then he makes way for the next notoriety. Very few 
courses of lectures are delivered in the cities and larger 
villages that do not present at least one new man, who 
Is invited simply because people are curious to see him. 
The popular desire is strong to come in some way into 
personal contact with those who do remarkable things. 
They cannot be chased in the street ; they can be seen 
only to a limited extent in the drawing-room ; but it is 
easy to pay twenty-five cents to hear them lecture, with 
the privilege of looking at them for an hour and criti- 
cizing them for a week. 

It is a noteworthy fact, in this connection, that, 
while there are thousands of cultivated men who would 
esteem it a privilege to lecture for the lecturer's usual 
fee, there are hardly more than twenty-five in the coun- 
try whom the public considers it a privilege worth pay- 
ing for to hear. It is astonishing, that, in a country so 
fertile as this in the production of gifted and cultivated 
men, so few find it possible to establish themselves 
upon the platform as popular favorites. If the accept- 
ed ones were in a number of obvious particulars alike, 
there could be some intelligent generalizing upon 'the 
subject ; but men possessing fewer points of resem- 
blance, or presenting stronger contrasts, in style of per- 
son and performance, than the established favorites of 



The Popular Lecture. 317 

lecture-going people, cannot be found in the world ; 
and if any generalization be attempted, it must relate 
to matters below the surface and beyond the common 
apprehension. It is certain that not always the great 
est or the most brilliant or the most accomplished men 
are to be found among the popular lecturers. A man 
may make a great, even a brilliant speech on an im- 
portant public question, and be utterly dreary in the 
lecture-room. There are multitudes of eloquent clergy- 
men who in their pulpits command the attention of im- 
mense congregations, yet who meet with no acknowl- 
edgment of power upon the platform. 

In a survey of those who are the established favor- 
ites, it will be found that there are no slaves among 
them. The people will not accept tnose who are creed- 
bound, or those who bow to any authority but God and 
themselves. They insist that those who address them 
shall be absolutely free, and that they shall speak only 
for themselves. Party and sectarian spokesmen find 
no permanent place upon the platform. It is only when 
a lecturer cuts loose from all his conventional belong- 
ings, and speaks with thought and tongue unfettered, 
that he finds his way to the popular heart. This free- 
dom has sometimes been considered dangerous by the 
more conservative members of society ; and they have 
not unfrequently managed to get the lectures into their 
own hands, or to organize courses representing more 



318 The Popular Lecture. 

moderate views in matters of society, politics, and reli- 
gion ; but their efforts have uniformly proved failures. 
The people have always refused to support lectures 
which brought before them the bondmen of creeds and 
parties. Year after year men have been invited to 
address audiences three fourths of whom disagreed 
utterly with the sentiments and opinions which it was 
well understood such men would present, simply be- 
cause they were free men, with minds of their own and 
tongues that would speak those minds or be dumb. 
Names could be mentioned of those who for the last 
fifteen years have been established favorites in commu- 
nities which listened to them respectfully, nay, ap- 
plauded them warmly, and then abused them for the 
remainder of the year. 

It is not enough, however, that a lecturer be free. 
He must have something fresh to say, or a fresh and 
attractive way of saying that which is not altogether 
new. Individuality, and a certain personal quality 
which, for lack of a better name, is called magnetism, 
are also essential to the popular lecturer. People de- 
sire to be moved, to be acted upon, by a strong and 
positive nature. They like to be furnished with fresh 
ideas, or with old ideas put into a fresh and practical 
form, so that they can be readily apprehended and 
appropriated. 

And here comes the grand difficulty which every 






The Popular Lecture. 319 



lecturer encounters, and over which so many stumble 
Into failure, — that of interesting and refreshing men 
and women of education and culture, and, at the same 
time, of pleasing, moving, and instructing those of 
feebler acquirements or no acquirements at all. Most 
men of fine powers fail before a popular audience, be- 
cause they do not fully apprehend the thing to be done. 
They almost invariably write above the level of one 
half of their audience, or below the level of the other 
half. In either event, they fail, and have the mortifica- 
tion of seeing others of inferior gifts succeed through a 
nicer adaptation of their literary wares to the wants of 
the market. Much depends upon the choice of a sub- 
ject. If that be selected from those which touch uni- 
versal interests and address common motives, half the 
work is done. A clear, simple, direct style of compo- 
sition, apt illustration (and the power of this is mar- 
vellous), and a distinct and pleasant delivery, will do 
much to complete the success. 

It is about equally painful and amusing to witness 
the efforts which some men make to write down to the 
supposed capacity of a popular audience. The pueril- 
ities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken 
by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the 
crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their 
end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the 
actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than 



320 The Popular Lecture. 

that of regarding an American lecture-going audience 
with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in thia 
country that can more readily and justly decide 
whether a man has anything to say, and can say it 
well, than a lecture-audience in one of the smaller 
cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is 
quite common to suppose that a Western audience de- 
mands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher 
style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, 
there are those who suppose that a lecture which 
would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern 
audience would be beyond the comprehension of an 
average Western audience ; but the lecturer who shall 
accept any such assumption as this will find -himself 
very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture 
is both popular and fashionable, and the best people 
attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, there, 
that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. 
The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men ; but 
if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the 
best thought he produces. 

In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, 
the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the 
social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and 
public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the 
class that furnishes the best material in the smaller 
cities ; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his 



The Popular Lecture. 321 

best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Phila- 
delphia. 

. Another requisite to popularity upon the platform 
i^ earnestness. Those who imagine that a permanent 
hold upon the people can be obtained by amusing them 
$re widely mistaken. The popular lecture has fallen 
into disrepute with many worthy persons in conse- 
quence of the admission of buffoons and triflers to the 
lecturer's platform ; and it is an evil which ought to 
be remedied. It is an evil, indeed, which is slowly 
working its own remedy. It is a disgraceful fact, that, 
in order to draw together crowds of people, men have 
been admitted to the platform whose notoriety was 
won by the grossest of literary charlatanism — men 
whose only hold upon the public was gained by extrav- 
ag'ances of thought and expression which would com- 
promise the dignity and destroy the self-respect of , any 
man of character and common sense. It is not enough 
that these persons quickly disgust their audiences, and 
have a brief life upon the list. They ought never to 
be introduced to the public as lecturers ; and any mo- 
mentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured 
from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks 
is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the 
damage they do to what is called " The Lecture Sys« 
tern." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to sup- 
pose that it can have a strong and permanent interest 
14* 



S22 The Popular Lecture. 

m a trifler ; and it is a gross injustice to every respect- 
able lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men 
who have no better motive and no higher mission than 
the stage-elown and the negro-minstreL 

But the career of triners is always short. Only he 
who feels that he has something to do in making the 
world wiser and better, and who, in a bold and manly 
way, tries persistently to do it, is always welcome ; 
and this fact — an incontrovertible one — is a sufficient 
vindication of the popular lecture from all the asper- 
sions that have been cast upon it by disappointed aspi- 
rants for its honors, and shallow observers of its tend- 
encies and results. 

The choice of a subject has already been spoken of 
as a matter of importance, and a word should be said 
touching its manner of treatment. This introduces a 
discussion of the kind of lecture which at the present 
time is mainly in demand. Many wise and good men 
have questioned the character of the popular lecture. 
In their view, it does not add sufficiently to the stock 
of popular knowledge. The results are not solid and 
tangible. They would prefer scientific, or historical, 
or philosophical discourses. This conviction is so 
strong with these men, and the men themselves are 
so much respected, that the people are inclined to coin- 
cide with them in the matter of theory, while at the 
Bame time thev refuse to give their theory practical 



The Popular Lecture. 323 

entertainment. One reason why scientific and histor- 
ical lectures are not popular, is to be found in the dif- 
ficulty of obtaining lecturers who have sufficient inge- 
nuity and enthusiasm to make such lectures interesting. 
The number of men in the United States who can make 
such lectures attractive to popular audiences can be 
counted on the fingers of a single hand. We have had 
but one universally popular lecturer on astronomy in 
twenty years, and he is now numbered among the pre- 
cious sacrifices of the war. There is only one entirely 
acceptable popular lecturer on natural sciences in New 
England ; and what is he among so many ? 

But this class of lectures has not been widely suc- 
cessful, even under the most favorable circumstances, 
and with the very best lecturers ; and it is to be ob- 
served, that they grow less successful with the increas- 
ing intelligence of the people. In this fact is to be 
found an entirely rational and competent explanation 
of their failure. The schools have done so much toward 
popularizing science, and the circulating-library has 
rendered so familiar the prominent facts of history, that 
men and women do not go to the lecture to learn, and, 
as far as any appreciable practical benefit is concerned, 
do not need to go. It is only when some eminent en- 
thusiast in these walks of learning consents to address 
them that they come out, and then it is rather to place 
themselves under the influence of his personality than 



The Popular Lecture. 



to acquire the knowledge which he dispenses. Facta. 
if they are identified in any special way with the expe- 
rience and life of the lecturer, are always acceptable ; 
but facts which are recorded in books find a poor mar- 
ket in the popular lecture-room. Thus, while purely 
historical and scientific lectures are entirely neglected, 
narratives of personal travel, which combine much of 
historical and scientific interest, have been quite popu- 
lar, and, indeed, have been the specialties of more than 
one of the most popular of American lecturers, whose 
names will be suggested at once by this statement. 

Twenty years ago the first popular lectures on anato- 
my and physiology were given, and a corps of lectur- 
ers came up and swept over the whole country, with 
much of interest and instruction to the people and no 
small profit to themselves. These lectures called the 
attention of educators to these sciences. Text-books 
for schools and colleges were prepared, and anatomy 
and physiology became common studies for the young. 
In various ways, through school-books and magazines 
and newspapers, there has accumulated a stock of pop- 
ular knowledge of these sciences, and an apprehension 
of the limit of their practical usefulness, which have 
quite destroyed the demand for lectures upon them. 
Though a new generation has risen since the lecture 
on anatomy and physiology was the rage, no leaner 
field could possibly be found than that which the coun- 



The Popular Lecture. 325 

try now presents to the popular lecturer on these scien- 
ces. These facts are interesting in themselves, and 
they serve to illustrate the truth of that which has 
been stated touching lectures upon general historical 
and scientific subjects. 

For facts alone the modern American public does 
not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, 
to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffu- 
sion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in 
demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know 
how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how 
to govern them, and how far to be governed by them ; 
and the man who takes the facts with which the popu- 
lar life has come into contact and association, and draws 
from them their nutritive and motive power, and points 
out their relations to individual and universal good, 
and organizes around them the popular thought, and 
uses them to give direction to the popular life, and 
does all this with masterly skill, is the man whose 
houses are never large enough to contain those who 
throng to hear him. This is the popular lecturer, par 
excellence. The people have an earnest desire to know 
what a strong, independent, free man has to say about 
those facts which touc 7 a the experience, the direction, 
and the duty of their daily life ; and the lecturer who 
with a hearty human sympathy addresses himself to 
this desire, and enters upon the seiwice with genuine 



326 The Popular Lecture. 

enthusiasm, wins the highest reward there is to be woe 
in his field of effort. 

The more ill-natured critics of the popular lecturer 
have reflected with ridicule upon his habit of repeti- 
tion. A lecturer in full employment will deliver the 
same discourse perhaps fifty or a hundred times in a 
single season. There are probably half a dozen favor- 
ite lectures which have been delivered from two hun- 
dred to five hundred times within the last fifteen years. 
It does, indeed, at first glance, seem ridiculous for a 
man to stand, night after night, and deliver the same 
words, with the original enthusiasm apparently at its 
full height ; and some lecturers, with an extra spice of 
mirthfulness in their composition, have given public 
record of their impressions in this respect. There are, 
however, certain facts to be considered which at least 
relieve him from the charge of literary sterility. A 
lecture often becomes famous, and is demanded by 
each succeeding audience, whatever the lecturer's pref- 
erences may be. There are lectures called for every 
year by audiences and committees which the lecturer 
would be glad never to see again, and which he never 
would see again, if he were to consult his own judg- 
ment alone. Then the popular lecturer, as has been 
already intimated, is usually engaged during two thirds 
of the year in some business or profession whose duties 
forbid the worthy preparation of more than one dis- 



The Popular Lecture. 827 

course for winter use. Then, if he has numerous en- 
gagements, he has neither time nor strength to do 
more than his nightly work ; for, among all the pur- 
suits in which literary men engage, none is more ex- 
haustive in its demands upon the nervous energy than 
that of constant lecturing. The fulfilment of from sev- 
enty-five to ninety engagements involves, in round num- 
bers, ten thousand miles of railroad-travel, much of it 
in the night, and all of it during the most unpleasant 
season of the year. There is probably nothing short 
of a military campaign that is attended by so many 
discomforts and genuine hardships as a season of active 
lecturing. Unless a man be young and endowed with 
an extraordinary amount of vital power, he becomes 
entirely unfitted by his nightly work, and the dissipa- 
tion consequent upon constant change of scene, for con- 
secutive thought and elaborate composition. 

It is fortunate for the lecturer that there is no 
necessity for variety. The oft-repeated lecture is new 
to each new audience, and, being thoroughly in hand, 
and entirely familiar, is delivered with better effect 
than if the speaker were frequently choosing from a 
well-furnished repertory. It is popularly supposed that 
a lecturer loses all interest in a performance which he 
repeats so many times. This supposition is correct, in 
certain aspects of the matter, but not in any sense 
which detracts from his power to make it interesting 



328 The Popular Lecture. 

to others. It is the general experience of lecturers, 
that, until they have delivered a discourse from ten tc 
twenty times, they are themselves unable to measure 
its power ; so that a performance which is offered at 
first timidly, and with many doubts, comes at length to 
be delivered confidently, and with measurable certainty 
of acceptance and success. The grand interest of a lec- 
turer is in his new audience — in his experiment on an 
assembly of fresh minds. The lecture itself is regard- 
ed only as an instrument by which a desirable and im- 
portant result is to be achieved ; and familiarity with 
it, and steady use in its elocutionary handling, are con- 
ditions of the best success. Having selected the sub- 
ject which, at the time, and for the times, he considers 
freshest and most fruitful, and with thorough care 
written out all he has to say upon it, there is no call 
for recurrence to minor themes, either as regards the 
credit of the lecturer or the best interests of those 
whom he addresses. 

What good has the popular lecture accomplished ? 
Its most enthusiastic advocates will not assert that it 
has added greatly to the stock of popular knowledge, 
in science, or art, in history, philosophy, or literature ; 
yet the most modest of them may claim that it has 
bestowed upon American society a permanent good 
of incalculable value. The relentless foe of all bigotry 
in politics and religion, the constant opponent of every 



The Popular Lecture. 329 

form of bondage to party and sect, the practical teach- 
er of the broadest toleration of individual opinion, it 
has had more to do with the steady melioration of the 
prejudices growing out of denominational interests in 
Church and State than any other agency whatever. 
The platform of the lecture-hall has been common 
ground for the representatives of all our social, politi- 
cal, and religious organizations. It is there that ortho- 
dox and heterodox, progressive and conservative, have 
won respect for themselves and toleration for their 
opinions by the demonstration of their own manhood, 
and the recognition of the common human brother- 
hood ; for one has only to prove himself a true man, 
and to show a universal sympathy with men, to se- 
cure popular toleration for any opinion he may hold. 
Hardly a decade has passed away since, in nearly 
every Northern State, men suffered social depreciation 
in consequence of their political and religious opinions. 
Party and sectarian names have been freely used as re- 
proachful and even as disgraceful epithets. To call a 
man by the name which he had chosen as the represen- 
tative of his political or religious opinions was consid- 
ered equivalent to calling him a knave or a fool ; and 
if it happened that he was in the minority, his name 
alone was regarded as the stamp of social degradation. 
Now,' thanks to the influence of the popular lecture 
mainly, men have made, and are rapidly making, room 



330 The Popular Lecture. 

for each other. A man may be in the minority now 
without consequently being in personal disgrace. Men 
of liberal and even latitudinarian views are generously 
received in orthodox communities, and those of ortho- 
dox faith are gladly welcomed by men who subscribe 
to a shorter creed and bear a broader charter of life and 
liberty. There certainly has never been a time in the 
history of America when there was such generous and 
general toleration of all men and all opinions as now ; 
and as the popular lecture has been universal, with a 
determined aim and a manifest influence toward this 
end, it is but fair to claim for it a prominent agency in 
the result. 

Another good which may be counted among the 
fruits of the popular lecture, is the education of the 
public taste in intellectual amusements. The end 
which the lecture-goer seeks is not always improve- 
ment, in any respect. Multitudes of men and women 
have attended the lecture to be interested ; and to be 
interested intellectually is to be intellectually amused. 
Lecturers who have appealed simply to the emotional 
nature, without attempting to engage the intellect, have 
ceased to be popular favorites. So far as the popular 
lecture has taken hold of the affections of a communi 
ty, and secured its constant support, it has destroyed 
the desire for all amusements of a lower grade ; and it 
will be found, that, generally, those who attend the 



The Popular Lecture. 331 

lecture rarely or never give their patronage and pres- 
ence to the buffooneries of the day. They have found 
something better — something with more of flavor in 
the eating, with more of nutriment in the digestion. 
How great a good this is, those only can judge who 
realize that men will have amusements of some sort, 
and that, if they cannot obtain such as will elevate 
them, they will indulge in such as are frivolous and 
dissipating. The lecture does quite as much for ele- 
vated amusement out of the hall as in it. The quicken- 
ing social influence of an excellent lecture, particularly 
in a community where life flows sluggishly and all are 
absorbed in manual labor, is as remarkable as it is 
beneficent. The lecture and the lecturer are the com- 
mon topics of discussion for a week, and the conversa- 
tion which is so apt to cling to health and the weather 
is raised above the level of commonplace. 

Notwithstanding the fact that a moiety, or a major- 
ity, of the popular lecturers are clergymen, the lecture 
has not always received the favor of the cloth. Indeed, 
there has often been private and sometimes public 
complaint on the part of preachers, that the finished 
productions of the lecturer, the results of long and 
patient elaboration, rendered doubly attractive by a 
style of delivery to be won only by frequent repetition 
of the same discourse, have brought the hastily pre- 
pared and plainly presented Sunday sermon into an un« 



332 The Popular Lecture. 

just and damaging comparison. The complaint is a 
strange one, particularly as no one has ever claimed 
that the highest style of eloquence or the most remark- 
able models of rhetoric are to be found in the lecture- 
hall. There has, at least, been no general conviction 
that a standard of excellence in English and its utter- 
ance has been maintained there too high for the com- 
fort and credit of the pulpit. It is possible, therefore, 
that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the 
comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will 
gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That 
impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermon- 
izing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder 
utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pul- 
pit from the platform, there is no question. This feel- 
ing on the part of preachers is by no means universal, 
however ; for some of them have long regarded the 
lecture with contempt, and have sometimes resented it 
as an impertinence. And it may be (for there shall be 
no quarrel in the matter) that lecturers are quacks, and 
that lectures, like homoeopathic remedies, are very 
contemptible things ; but they have pleasantly modi- 
fied the doses of the old practice, however slow the 
doctors are to confess it ; and so much, at least, may 
be counted among the beneficent results of the system 
under discussion. 

Last in the brief enumeration of the benefits of the 



The Popular Lecture. 333 

popular lecture, it has been the devoted, consistent, 
never tiring champion of universal liberty. If the 
popular lecturer has not been a power in this nation 
for the overthrow of American slavery — for its over- 
throw in the conscientious convictions and the legal 
and conventional fastnesses of the nation — then have 
the friends of oppression grossly lied ; for none have 
received their malicious and angry objurgations more 
unsparingly than our plain-speaking gentleman who 
makes his yearly circuit among the lyceums. No 
champion of slavery, no advocate of privilege, no 
apologist for systematized and legalized wrong has 
ever been able to establish himself as a popular lec- 
turer. The people may listen respectfully to such a 
man once ; but, having heard him, they drop him for- 
ever. In truth, a man cannot be a popular lecturer 
who does not plant himself upon the eternal principles 
of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and 
an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery- 
loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as 
much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery- 
einging poet. The taint so vitiates the whole aesthetic 
nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer 
powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal 
humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture 
becomes impossible to the man who bears it. The 
popular lecture, as it has been described in this discus- 



334: The Popular Lecture. 

sion, has never existed at the South, and could not be 
tolerated there. Until within four years it has never 
found opportunity for utterance in the capital of the 
nation ; but where liberty goes, it makes its way, and 
helps to break the way for liberty everywhere. 

It is a noteworthy fact, that the popular lecturer, 
though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, 
has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an 
important man in the party which has represented his 
principles in this country. He has always been too free 
to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party 
seeking power or striving to preserve it. ISTo party of 
any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as 
its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers 
and party-organs, professing principles identical with 
his own, washed their hands of all responsibility for 
his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling 
shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment 
of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom 
cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animos- 
ities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery 
itinerant. Representative of none but himself, dis- 
owned or hated by all parties, acknowledging respon- 
sibility to God and his own conscience only, he has 
done his work, and done it well — done it amid careful 
questionings and careless curses — done it, and been 
royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represent- 



The Popular Lecture. 335 

ed the political and religious prejudices of the people 
could not have called around them a baker's dozen, 
with tickets at half-price or at no price at all. 

When the cloud which now envelops the country 
shall gather up its sulphurous folds and roll away, 
tinted in its retiring by the smile of God beaming from 
a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and 
justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, 
shall trace home to their fountains the streams of influ- 
ence and power which will then join to form the river 
of the national life, he will find one, starting far in- 
land among the mountains, longer than the rest and 
mightier than most, and will recognize it as the conflu- 
ent outpouring of living, Christian speech, from ten 
thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men stood 
and vindicated the right of man to freedom. 



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